


tell yourself this is how it's going to be

by belovedmuerto



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sam Wilson is a Gift, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve and Nat are bffls, bucky barnes pov, eventually fluffy, hopefully, not really a fix-it, this was supposed to be less painful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-07-24 06:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7497657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is absolutely one hundred percent not going to cry himself to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first part of the thing I've been working on for, like, two months. I'm kind of stalled, so maybe this will help me get a better handle on the rest of it? I dunno. This is totally unbeta'd and I may yet decide it's all one big thing instead of different parts so there might be more chapters or more fics but either way eventually Steve gets a lot of hugs and cuddles from people. Including Bucky. Spoiler alert.

Steve is absolutely one hundred percent not going to cry himself to sleep. He’s not. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, and stays like that, pressing and pressing until he’s seeing starbursts behind them. And then he stays like that, watching the colors and trying not to let himself think at all.

It sort of works.

Everything is soft here. Soft and quietly, elegantly luxurious. He’ll think about that instead. Think about the softness of the blankets on the perfectly, wonderfully firm mattress he’s laying on.

He’s gotten sort of used to opulence, living in Stark’s tower the past couple of years, but it’s different here in Wakanda. Maybe it’s a difference in taste. Maybe it’s just that no one here seems at all concerned about what the rest of the world says or does or thinks.

That’s pretty nice, actually. He wishes he were more like that. Maybe he’ll pick it up by osmosis.

Also, as it turns out, Wakanda has no extradition agreements with any other countries.

Useful.

He’s not sure what makes him move his hands and open his eyes, but he listens to the instinct. It takes a few moments for the bright spots to clear his sight. When they do, he sees the outline of Bucky, standing near the end of his bed. He’s so quiet; Steve hadn’t heard him come in. He’s so light on his feet, silent. He thinks Bucky wasn’t always that way but he doesn’t know for sure. Maybe he just never noticed before. Certainly he was quiet during the war, when he was a sniper. Maybe it was always there. Maybe Bucky had always wanted Steve to know he was there, before.

“Buck,” he says. His voice comes out hoarse, tight.

“Steve,” Bucky replies. His voice is low and soft, nearly void of emotion, of inflection, but something in it says concern to Steve, and his eyes fill again.

Steve takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly in hopes of it not shuddering or wavering. He fails. His eyes aren’t clearing. Dammit.

He’s just so tired. Tired and overwhelmed. Tired and overwhelmed and now Bucy is in his room, making everything better and worse at the same time.

_Oh god Buck don’t go please don’t go I can’t stand it I can’t do this on my own anymore I just got you back don’t do this please don’t go don’t leave me again--_

Bucky walks around to the side of Steve’s bed and sits. It is possibly the closest they’ve been since they’d limped out of the base in Siberia together. Steve has wondered ever since then (not even twenty four whole hours and a lifetime all at once) if Buck had needed to lean on him as much as he had. He fears he had. He fears he hadn’t.

Steve watches him sit, and sits up himself. Keeps watching him as his eyes adjust to the darkness, the outline of him becoming more clear the longer he stares. He seems soft around the edges, as if he’s blurred himself, somehow.

Steve is thinking crazy things. He’s at the very least not thinking straight. Pain and grief can do that.

He has so much to grieve for, and no right to grieve at all, not when he’s whole and sound. When his thoughts are his own. When he doesn’t have to fear a string of random words turning him into a mindless killing machine. A huge part of what he’s grieving for sits at his knees, looking at him with nearly expressionless eyes.

“You okay?” Bucky asks, after several minutes of mutual staring. Steve’s eyes have adjusted as much as they’re going to. He figures Bucky’s must have as well.

Steve chuckles in reply, and it comes out strange. Wavering and watery and bitter as hell. He flops back on the bed. “No. No I’m not.”

“I know,” Bucky replies. “Surprised you admitted it, though.”

Steve sighs. “I’m so tired, Buck. So tired of everything.” His voice is soft and bare.

“Yeah,” Bucky replies. “I get that. Me too.”

Steve chuckles that strange wavering chuckle again, and sits up again, because it brings him closer to Bucky, like a magnet, drawn in. “Yeah.”

He pulls his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them.

“It feels strange here,” Bucky says, after a few minutes.

“Strange how?” Steve asks. He rests his chin on his knees, looks at Bucky. He is still soft around the edges, blending into the darkness, bleeding into the darkness. Steve thinks that means something, but he couldn’t tell you what. Crazy thoughts.

Bucky shrugs. He’s mostly looking at his lap. His hand, maybe? Steve can’t quite see well enough to tell. Bucky isn’t looking at him, though.

They’re going to work more on his arm, tomorrow.

“Strange like… I don’t know. Like it’s safe. I think? It’s different. Nice. No one knows we’re here. No one can get to me, here. It’s a novel feeling, I think.”

Steve doesn’t answer for a while. He does feel safe in Wakanda. Safe and forgotten. Apart from the rest of the world. His concerns seem far away. He’s not sure that’s a good thing, actually. He’ll have to go back out in the world eventually. If nothing else, he’ll need to figure out where his friends are, the people who’d helped him. Hopefully T’Challa can help with that.

He’ll need to find Nat, too. He needs to tell her about so much. There’s so much she just understands, the way no one else ever does. The way no one else ever has, other than Bucky. Although Sam comes close. 

Omniscience is a good trait in a friend. 

“It feels like a reprieve,” Steve says, eventually.

“Yes,” Bucky agrees.

They sit silently for a while.

“The worst has pretty much already happened,” Bucky points out.

Steve laughs again, tasting the bitterness of it on the back of his tongue, against his teeth. “At least we’re still alive, I guess.”

Bucky turns his head in Steve’s direction. “Whoda thunk it.” He’s talking about far more than just the last day or two.

“Were you in Romania that whole time?” Steve asks, because he can’t think of any way to respond to Bucky’s statement that wouldn’t lay himself completely bare, too vulnerable. “Since after DC?”

“No,” Bucky answers, allowing the change in subject. “I moved around a lot at first. I went to some of the places I started to remember. Places they kept me. Most of them were gone. Or. Different.”

“I took a lot of them out. Looking for you.”

He sees a flash of white. Bucky’s teeth. He’s smiled, gone again as soon as Steve has caught the flash of it.

“I know you did,” Bucky says, soft and low. Slow, like the way Steve remembers he used to talk sometimes, when he was feeling something strongly and trying not to let it show. Steve feels it shiver down his spine, that tone of voice, those words.

_I’d set the whole world on fire for you,_ Steve thinks. He doesn’t know if he can say that to Bucky though. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Maybe never. Maybe it’s already too late, and he missed his chance in the forties, when he pulled Bucky off that table in that prison camp. Maybe he missed his chance the first time Bucky pulled him to his feet after a fight, the first time he said ‘til the end of the line’.

Maybe Bucky has always known anyway.

Maybe they’re both trying to find the right words, and they don’t exist. Maybe they don’t need them.

But it’s all moot.

“Never found a trace of you,” Steve murmurs.

Bucky shrugs; Steve sees his shoulder move, for a moment they’re even, before his right one drops again. Without the weight of the arm, he’s a little lopsided. Steve wants to draw him. He’s not sure he’s allowed.

“They taught me how to disappear, before they started putting me in cryo. I’m good at it. I was a ghost. I’ve been one for a long time.” Bucky sounds resigned to it; to his non-existence.

It sounds painful. And lonely. Possibly even lonelier than Steve’s life has been since he came out of the ice. Surrounded by people all the time, and always alone. But he can’t say that.

“What did you do, all that time? Seems like you were getting by okay.”

Bucky shrugs again. “It wasn’t quite up to getting by. It was surviving. Sort of. Always looking over my shoulder. Just waiting for them to find me again. I’d gotten away before, you know. But they had those words. Always did. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it always dropped. Just a matter of time.

“But I got by, in some fashion or another.”

Steve waits for him to go on, and eventually he does, sounding almost as though he’s just talking to himself.

“I didn’t want to use too much of what they’d given me. I kept off grid as much as I could. I… fixed things for people. Traded for what I needed where I could. I did a little translation. Online? I speak a lot of languages. Probably some I don’t even know I speak. Won’t know until I see something or hear someone speaking it. I think I speak Latin.”

Bucky turns his head in Steve’s direction.

“Pater noster qui es in coelis,” he murmurs.

“Sanctificetur nomen tuum,” Steve adds. “Buck, that’s just the Our Father. You might just still have that from childhood. Mass was all in Latin when we were kids.”

“Maybe,” Bucky concedes. “There’s more than just prayers though, in my head.”

“I know,” Steve agrees.

“I read a lot,” Bucky adds. “I like to read.”

“You always did.”

“Is it okay if I stay in here tonight?”

It seems like it comes out of nowhere, the question, but Steve expects Bucky has been working up to it. He doesn’t know why, but it settles something in him.

“Of course you can,” he answers.

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbles. “Be right back.”

He gets up and leaves, swift and as silent as when he’d arrived. Steve feels like he has barely managed to take a full breath when Bucky returns. He has several blankets wrapped around him from the looks of it, and a pillow under his arm. He drops the pillow on the floor next to Steve’s bed and starts to unwind the blankets. He looks a little ridiculous at it, and Steve finds himself smiling just a little bit.

“You can share if you want,” Steve ventures. It’s not like they’ve never shared a bed (and more) before.

Bucky stops and pulls the blankets off his face. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Steve.”

“Why not?” His voice comes out only a little whiny, and he wishes she could see Bucky’s face, see the ghost of a smile he thinks probably makes a brief appearance.

He started to see those micro-expressions earlier that day. Maybe it’s just that he’s getting used to how little expression Bucky displays now. It’s such a change from when they were young; it had always been easy to see what Bucky was feeling on his face. He’d never hidden his feelings from anyone, least of all Steve.

“How bad are your nightmares these days?” Bucky asks, instead of answering directly.

Steve doesn’t answer, but he feels his mouth pull down in a frown.

“Exactly,” Bucky goes on after a few silent moments. “It’s been a long time since I shared a bed with… anyone.”

“Okay,” Steve concedes.

Bucky finishes making his nest of blankets and lays down. Silence falls over them like another blanket, soft and dense.

Steve is drifting sort of towards something resembling sleep when he hears Bucky speak again, barely even a whisper, soft and almost regretful.

“I’m going through with it.”

Steve sighs, heavy and shaking. “I know, Buck.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, still barely even a whisper.

“I don’t want you to,” Steve blurts out. He’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t do anything to let Bucky know how it was killing him, how much he didn’t want Bucky to go.

So. Yeah. Failed that.

“I know,” Bucky replies. He sounds resigned, like he’s waiting for Steve’s arguments. Which is exactly what Steve doesn’t want. He doesn’t want this to mar what little time they have left, before Bucky goes under. He doesn’t want to weigh Bucky down anymore than he already is.

“It’s your choice, Buck. I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it. I won’t do that to you.”

Bucky is quiet for so long that Steve thinks maybe that’s the end of it, so he shifts and tries to settle into, if not actual sleep, then at least rest.

“You’ll be all right, Steve,” Bucky says, out of nowhere. It almost sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as Steve.

Steve snorts, and it’s definitely comes out somewhere between what he’d intended and a sob. “Buck, when have I _ever_ been all right without you?”

Bucky makes a soft, pained noise and takes a deep breath. “Steve please don’t talk me out of this.”

“I know, I know, sorry.” Steve turns and presses his face into his pillow. He doesn’t want to hear himself and he definitely doesn’t want Bucky to hear him. He’s really not trying to make this more difficult. He doesn’t want Bucky to feel the burden of his own hurt.

“You can wake me up sometimes, if you need to,” Bucky says in a choked voice. “They said they’ll need to do it a few times a year anyway.”

“Okay,” Steve says a long time later, when he can talk again. “What if I just miss you real bad?”

Bucky gives a watery chuckle. “Maybe on your birthday, punk.”

“Okay,” Steve says again. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Bucky echoes, voice gone soft and pained, almost not there at all.

They don’t talk anymore after that. Eventually, Steve dozes off.

He wakes up again on his stomach, practically falling off the bed. One arm is under him, gone completely numb under his weight, the other hangs off the bed. His knuckles are brushing against something soft. With a groan he drags his right arm out from under him and opens his eyes.

Bucky is watching him. His knuckles are brushing against Bucky’s ribs. He is on his back in the nest of blankets, his hand on his stomach, breathing slow and even, eyes on Steve.

“Hi,” Steve mumbles, mostly into the pillow his face is still smashed against.

Bucky’s lips twitch into a tiny smile. “Hi,” he replies.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Yeah, a little.”

Steve rolls over and sits up, rubbing his face with his hands, shaking the pins and needles out of his right arm, brain still fogged with the remnants of sleep. He misses that tiny bit of contact already. “Me too, I guess.”

\----

There are tests that day. So many tests. Bucky submits to them all calmly, docile. Pliant.

Steve hates it.

They check him over, too. They insist upon it, and Steve is acutely aware that he is a guest here in Wakanda. They both are. Only safe by the grace of the king. So he bites back the sharp words that crowd on his tongue and answers their questions. He lets them draw blood, even. There’s a chance it could help Bucky. And besides, he’s seen T’Challa in action as the Black Panther. Wakanda obviously has its own version of the serum. Or something like it. 

They are the most technologically advanced country on the planet, after all.

Once they finish with him, he goes down the hall to find Bucky’s who is still being examined.

Steve stands outside the room, looking in.

There’s a cryo-chamber in the corner.

\----

The afternoon is theirs, and Bucky says he wants to go for a walk. Steve agrees. It’s better to keep busy, to try and keep his mind off the cryo-chamber, off how alone he feels, even with Bucky right beside him, ambling along.

But the loneliness is nothing new.

It’s hot outside, in the jungle surrounding the facility where they’re staying. Hot and humid, and Steve feels overdressed in his t-shirt and jeans. Bucky is still in the plain white tank and scrubs they’d given him before the tests, and he looks… good.

He looks peaceful, and it pulls at Steve, that peace. It soothes him, to see his oldest friend at ease, even though the reason for it makes him want to scream and rage against the whole world. It makes him want to hit things.

“You look--” he starts to say, stopping himself before he can finish, unsure how such an observation would be taken. Things are still unsure between them, a chasm he doesn’t know how to traverse.

Bucky glances over at Steve and smiles, as much as he is capable. “You can say it, Steve.”

Steve manages not to sob, but it’s a near thing. Bucky just keeps looking at him, and he doesn’t want to break in from of him. He needs to be strong for his friend right now. “You look peaceful, Bucky. Ya jerk.”

Bucky smiles again, mostly with his eyes, and they keep walking.

“I’m jealous,” Steve adds, after a while. He’s looking anywhere but at Bucky.

“I know,” Bucky replies. “Steve, I--”

Steve looks at him. He looks so good, it hurts.

“I will I could help you,” Bucky says. “But I can’t. Not like this.”

Steve shrugs. “You shouldn’t have to, Buck. I’m not your responsibility. I can take care of myself.”

It sounds hollow even to his own ears.

“When has that ever stopped me before?”

Steve looks up. Bucky is standing close, just looking at him, understanding in his eyes. Bucky knows how much Steve is hurting, and he knows he can’t do anything about it right now, and he’s sorry for it.

“It’s okay, Buck.”

Bucky shakes his head, denying this, but he slips his hand into Steve’s, and they keep walking.

\----

They eat dinner. The doctors want Bucky on a pretty restricted diet, so as not to fuck up his system too much before he goes into the deep freeze (at least, that’s what Steve assumes, from what little Bucky says about it; he didn’t hear any of the instructions the docs gave Bucky as he wasn’t allowed in the room). (He’s not sure if that was because of the doctors or at Bucky’s request. He’s afraid to ask.) He tells them he’ll eat whatever Bucky’s eating.

In solidarity. Or something. Maybe it makes him feel a little closer to Bucky, even though the distance across the table feels about the size of the Grand Canyon.

God, he’s a mess.

The food is bland, but filling. It doesn’t matter, Steve doesn’t taste any of it anyway. Bucky watches him through the whole meal. Steve doesn’t really look at him, staring intently at his food instead, but he can feel Bucky watching him.

They don’t talk, beyond the soft comment Bucky makes about the food sort of reminding him of when they were kids, but Steve isn’t even able to respond to that. 

After they’re finished eating, Bucky disappears into the bathroom, presumably to shower. Steve goes to the chair by the window and sits. He sort of drifts away for a while, lulled by the quiet and the sound of the shower in the background.

When he blinks and returns to the present, Bucky is in front of him.

“Go shower, Stevie,” he says. His voice is soft again.

“Okay,” Steve replies. And he does as he is told, going through the motions but not really retaining any of it. 

They have one more day, before Bucky goes into cryo. One day, a few last tests in the morning, and then it’s over, and Bucky will be out of his reach yet again. Gone. Again.

It feels like he’s on that train again, listening to Bucky’s screams echo off the walls of the canyon, always out of reach. Always too late. Always not enough.

“Stop it,” Bucky says to him, almost as soon as he steps out of the bathroom.

“What?” Steve replies.

Bucky doesn’t answer. He just manhandles Steve across the room to the bed.

“It’s early, Buck,” Steve protests, less than half-hearted.

“Don’t care, punk,” Bucky replies.

“Jerk,” Steve mutters. 

Bucky laughs, the most Steve has heard him laugh since all this started. He shoves Steve into bed. It makes him feel like a kid again, like he’s still the person he thinks of himself as, five foot nothing and a hundred pounds of rage, and for a second or three he’s terrified that he’s just going to break down, start sobbing. Truly breakdown into tiny little pieces that no one will ever be able to reassemble.

“I can stay here if you want,” Bucky offers.

He sounds hesitant. Like he’s trying to hide from Steve that he wants to stay.

“Yeah, Buck. I always want you to stay.”

“Okay. Be right back.”

Steve uses the time while Bucky is gone to take off most of his clothes. He leaves himself in a t-shirt and his boxer briefs. He crawls under the covers and pulls them up to his chin.

Bucky returns a few minutes later in what Steve suspects are his own sweats and a t-shirt. He stands at the bottom of the bed for a minute, looking at Steve. Just looking at him. He glances of the nest of blankets still next to the bed, and Steve can’t hide his cringe.

Steve waits. Bucky nods seemingly mostly to himself, and gets in bed next to Steve instead.

“This probably won’t work,” Bucky says. He sounds grumpy.

“Okay,” Steve answers. He hides his smile in his pillow for a moment, then he turns on his back. Bucky is in the same position, watching Steve out of the corners of his eyes.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Shut up, Steve.”

Steve is grinning when he says, “Okay.”

Bucky elbows him. “I’m sorry if I punch you in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, Buck,” steve agrees. “I’m sorry if I hit you when I’m asleep, too.”

The fall quiet after that, settling into the bed. Steve schools his breath into a slow rhythm and tries not to think too much. One more day.

Somewhere in the middle of his thoughts, with the quiet sound of Bucky breathing beside him in his eyes, Steve falls asleep.

\----

They’re sitting at the windows the next morning, nursing cups of coffee-- amazing coffee-- when T’Challa shows up. They’re not talking, because they are both constitutionally incapable of plainly speaking their feelings. Steve is afraid if he opens his mouth, all that he’ll be able to say, ever again, is ‘I love you. Please don’t go.’ 

From the way Bucky keeps looking at him, he’s pretty sure Bucky knows.

His bodyguards station themselves at either side of the door of their suite, with wary glares, for both Bucky and Steve, while the king crosses the room to them. He is holding several file folders.

“Congratulations are in order,” T’Challa announces, in that soft, authoritarian voice of his. He gestures at Steve to resume his seat. Bucky hadn’t bothered to stand, and Steve thinks he sees a twinkle of mischief in T’Challa’s eyes at that.

“Your asylum paperwork has been approved and processed. You are both welcome to remain in Wakanda as long as you like, as my personal guests.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, thinking _when did we apply for asylum in Wakanda?_

Bucky laughs, and Steve glares at him; he’s not close enough to elbow. 

“Also, Wakanda has no extradition agreements with any other nations,” Bucky points out, still chuckling.

The mischief in T’Challa’s eyes brightens. “That, too.”

Steve finds himself able to smile, a little. There is literally no way he’ll ever be able to repay T’Challa’s kindness, not for taking them in, not for doing all he’s already done and is willing to do to help Bucky find peace.

He hates it. But he’s grateful, and well aware of the debt he’s under.

“Something else interesting has come to my attention,” T’Challa continues. “Interesting and unprecedented.”

Steve looks at him, intrigued despite the dullness overlaying his senses.

T’Challa hands him one of the file folders he holds. “We’ve had an application for a tourist visa.”

“A tourist visa?” Steve questions.

“Bet that threw immigration for a loop,” Bucky mutters.

“Indeed,” T’Challa agrees, dry. “Our immigration office is two people. They were rather confused.” He gestures at the file.

Steve opens it. And laughs. He can’t help himself. He hands the file over to Bucky beside him. Bucky glances down and snorts.  
“Figures.”

The application is from one Natalie Rushman.

“I take it you have no objections to this application being approved?” T’Challa inquires.

(Bucky shrugs, because it’s not like he’ll be awake by the time she arrives anyway. But it will probably be good for Steve. They seem pretty close. Steve speaks of her fondly. If he doesn’t want her around though….

Steve should have people who care about him around him. (He ignores the voice in his head telling him that he should be one of them, no matter what it costs him, no matter that he can’t trust his own mind, not while the trigger words are still active.)

“I don’t mind,” Steve says, in a small voice that means the would, in fact, be ecstatic to see Natasha again.

Bucky breathes a sigh of relief. He doesn’t want Steve isolating himself.

“Very well,” T’Challa agrees. “I will have this application approved. Do you fear that she may report your location to… outside authorities?”

“No,” Steve replies. “I trust her.”

“Very well,” T’Challa says again. He takes his leave shortly after.

They sit in the quiet for a while. Bucky watches him wrestle with everything going on in his head.)

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees. He is swept along in Bucky’s wake, as ever. It won’t last, his wake will settle after tomorrow, and Steve doesn’t have any idea how long he’ll be able to tread water, once he doesn’t have Bucky to follow anymore.

Ugh. Everything is just breathtakingly fucked.

Bucky glares at him once they’re outside. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says.

“No you don’t,” Steve replies, automatic and instantly on the defensive. He knows Bucky probably does know what he’s thinking. Even seventy years of ice and death between them, even though they’re both different people, Bucky still reads him like one of those cheap pulp novels he’d loved.

“You’re the worst,” Bucky gripes, under his breath.

“Probably,” Steve replies. 

Bucky shoves him, and Steve shoves him back.

“So dramatic,” Bucky mutters.

“Ugh, shut _up_.”

They wander for a while, slowly, because they’re in a jungle and it’s incredibly hot and humid.

“It’s like summer back home,” Bucky says, after a while.

“Except worse,” Steve agrees.

“Prettier here, though.”

“Smells better, too.”

They wander along the paths through the jungle around the facility for several hours, mostly in silence. At some point, Steve realizes that Bucky has laced their fingers together, and he doesn’t let go. He squeezes a little, and Bucky squeezes back, and it’s kind of gross because it’s hot and they’ve both got sweaty palms because of it, but he doesn’t let go, and Bucky doesn’t let go either.

It’s grounding, and it makes him ache. Ache and ache and ache. It makes him feel like he’s wheezing, like he can’t catch his breath. It gets caught against the ache in his chest, and he can’t do anything about it except hold on and hope something gives.

Bucky stops walking and turns to him, eyes wide.

It ground him, holding Bucky’s hand, and he’s still panicking.

Bucky stares at him for a moment. Stares at him and then drags him down the path to a bench, pushes him down and then pushes him over further, so his head is between his knees.

“Breathe, punk,” he orders.

Steve tries. He yanks on Bucky’s arm, where he hasn’t let go of him, of his anchor, until Bucky sits beside him. Bucky leans into him, onto him, until he’s essentially laying across Steve’s back when they wheezing turns into something else. He just leans on Steve and lets him sob.

It can’t last forever, no matter how much Steve feels like the ache will never ease, like he’ll never stop sobbing, like he’ll never be able to breathe with Bucky gone. Eventually, though, Steve calms down, hiccuping a little as he catches his breath. Somehow, he’s still breathing, and he’s not crying anymore.

“I’m sorry, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs against his back.

“No,” Steve replies. He starts to sit up, and Bucky lets him, although he keeps leaning on Steve. Perhaps he knows that Steve needs that reminder. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make this harder on you. I’m not trying to change your mind.”

“Well, not a lot,” Bucky says.

Steve glances at him, and he’s smiling, just a little. “Not a lot,” he agrees, trying to find a smile of his own. It’s a little wavering and watery. He wipes his face.

Bucky just keeps looking at him. Just. Looking.

Steve takes a deep breath. He doesn’t want to move, he doesn’t want to burst the little bubble it feels like has formed around them.

“Steve,” Bucky says. He doesn’t keep going, he just looks at STeve, and Steve looks back, drinking him in, memorizing the lines of his jaw, the curve of his lips. Memorizes the details of him the way he’s been memorizing them since he was about ten years old. Maybe even before.

Bucky leans in, closes the distance between them, scant though it is, until their foreheads meet. Steve leans in, relishes those points of contact, forehead, shoulders, hands. He lets his eyes fall shut, and keeps breathing.

The first time he feels it, a soft brush of something across his lips, he dismisses it immediately as wishful thinking. Impossible. He didn’t feel Bucky move; it couldn’t have happened. He’s wanted it too long, too badly.

Then it happens again, barely a kiss, but it bolts him like electricity, and Steve jerks back, surprised, eyes flying open, wide and shocked.

“Buck--”

“I’m sorry--”

 

“No, don’t--”

Bucky starts to pull away, his posture going stiff, tense, his face shutting down, and Steve can’t let that happen. Not now, not here. He reaches out, stops him from getting up.

“I’m sorry, I was just surprised Buck. I wasn’t expecting you to-- to--”

Bucky shrugs. He’s blushing. Steve never thought he’d see the day. “Wanted you to have something to remember. Of me.”

“Buck.” Steve sighs. “I will never forget you. Ever. Why’d you kiss me?”

Bucky looks down, and then up again, meeting Steve’s eyes defiantly. “Wanted to.”

Steve huffs. “Ya couldn’t have done that sooner? Like, I dunno, 1931 or something?”

A slow grin spreads across Bucky’s face, lighting his eyes up in a way that makes Steve’s breath catch. He hasn’t seen that smile on Bucky’s face since before the war. “Got you beat, Rogers. Decided I was gonna marry you in 1926.”

“Buck, you were nine years old in 1926.”

Bucky shrugs. “Got you beat though, don’t I?”

“I never said--”

Bucky just grins at him.

“I hate you, you jerk.” But, somehow, Steve is laughing. Holding onto Bucky and laughing, and for a few bright, brief moments, the ache subsides.

And then Bucky is kissing him again, and he’s kissing back this time, soft and gentle. Steve falls into it, lets himself be led by Bucky, always willing to go where Bucky wants, where Bucky needs.

The kiss goes drugging, almost bruising, after a moment or forever, and one of htem is making little noises into it, almost pained. Steve isn’t sure who it is, but he can’t stop. Bucky’s hand is gentle against his cheek and he doesn’t know when they stopped holding hands, but he doesn’t feel gentle; Steve feels possessive, he burns with it, his hands fisted in Bucky’s hair, in his shirt, if he doesn’t stop now he’s going to start crying again, it must be him making those hitching little pained noises into the kiss because Bucky is petting him, gentling him, stroking his cheek, his neck, his back, murmuring endearments between kisses, pulling him close so Steve can press his face against Bucky’s neck and breathe. Just breath. Breathe.

“I hate you so fucking much,” Steve mumbles into Bucky’s skin.

“I know,” Bucky replies. “I love you too, Stevie.”

Steve makes a noise, involuntary, and tightens his arms around Bucky, and just holds on, for a very long time.

The rest of the day passes quietly, both of them thoughtful, contemplative. They may have kissed, they may have (at least in Bucky’s case) made their feelings essentially plain, but they still aren’t good at talking. Not about the important things.

So they don’t really talk. They walk back to the facility, and they spend the rest of the day sitting quietly in their suite, close to each other, always within reach, always reaching, for one another. Seeking reassurance with glance and touch.

Dinner is subdued. And short. Bucky isn’t supposed to eat much, this close to going into cryo, and Steve’s stomach is in so many knots he can barely manage to look at his meal without gagging.

Darkness falls, and Steve tries not to count the hours until Bucky goes under. Goes away.

“I’m going to bed,” Steve says eventually. Not because he’s tired, not because he wants the morning, but because he wants everything to go away, just for a little while.

“Okay,” Bucky replies, and there is a world of understanding in his voice. Of course there is, they’ve known each other practically their whole lives. 

He can feel Bucky’s eyes on him the whole time, as he crosses to the bedroom from where they’ve been sitting together. When the door is shut behind him, he leans against it for a moment, for the span of four deep breaths.

One.

Two.

Three. 

Four.

Steve moves through preparing for bed mechanically, his mind a million miles away, or at least in the next room.

He feels it building, the ache of Bucky being gone. The ache of being left behind, left alone. Steve lays down in bed and shuts his eyes and tries to talk himself out of how abandoned he feels. Left behind when Bucky went to war. When Bucky died. And now this.

He knows it’s not about him. But he feels it all the same. Lonely. Abandoned. Selfish.

He hates himself a little bit. Maybe a lot.

Steve lays in bed and waits for the sleep he’s sure is not going to come.

He’s still waiting a few minutes later when Bucky slips into the room.

“Hey,” he murmurs as he crosses to the empty side of the bed Steve had left for him.

“Hey,” Steve mumbles back.

“This okay?” Bucky asks as he slips into bed beside Steve.

“Yeah, ‘course.”

Bucky slides right over to him, nudges at him until Steve has rolled to his side and Bucky can slip his arm across Steve’s waist, spooning up behind him.

“Try to get some sleep, Stevie.”

“Yeah, okay.” But Steve knows he won’t.

And he doesn’t. But then, he’s pretty sure Bucky doesn’t either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still unbeta'd, soz.
> 
> Gonna go start on part three now. There will be more cuddling. Lots more cuddling. Eventually.

Steve doesn’t cry himself to sleep, after Bucky is gone. He doesn’t at all, he slips under soft and quiet and slow. It isn’t until he’s already mostly asleep and unable to move that it starts to feel like he’s sinking under the water again, and he wants to cry then, but he can’t. 

Before he can rouse himself enough to do more than want to cry, he’s gone.

Time passes, slow and syrupy, and somehow in great big chunks all at once. Sometimes he is awake, staring at nothing, telling himself over and over to get up, to do something, _anything_. He should eat. He should go see Bucky. He should talk to T’Challa. He should run. He should hide. He should find out when Natasha will be arriving. If Natasha will be arriving. He should help his friends.

He should care about something.

Anything at all would be nice.

He goes back to sleep instead.

The next time he wakes up, or regains consciousness or whatever, the next time Steve opens his eyes voluntarily and has an actual thought (that thought being ‘ _what the fuck?_ ’), Natasha is sitting in bed next to him.

“You didn’t meet me at the airport,” she says. She sounds angry. In this case, that probably means she’s hurt. Or maybe worried. Or some combination of the three.

Steve feels a brief pang of regret, of guilt. He shrugs one shoulder though, because it fades as quickly as it had sparked to life. He sort of shrugs one shoulder. Maybe. Kind of. He’s not entirely sure he has enough energy to actually move, so maybe he only thinks ‘shrug’.

Natasha takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

Steve shuts his eyes.

“Have you eaten recently?” Natasha asks, after a while. 

Steve is drifting. “I dunno,” he mumbles.

Natasha doesn’t react, but he can feel the stillness that settles over her. He doesn’t like it, but everything is so foggy he gets lost in it. He knows this is making her unhappy with him, but he can’t seem to do anything about it.

“It’s pretty bad, huh?” she asks, eventually. Steve’s not sure how much time has passed. He wasn’t even really aware that Natasha was still sitting beside him.

He shrugs again. It’s bad enough.

There’s still so much he should be doing. He just… doesn’t have the energy. He wants to care, but he can’t quite manage it.

“If I bring you food, will you eat?”

Steve thinks about it for a while, his thoughts slow and pondering and mostly wandering in little circles, mostly along the lines of a long and drawn out “ugh”, but eventually he manages to mumble, “Okay.”

Natasha nods. She pats him on the back and then gets up.

Steve shuts his eyes and lets himself drift while she’s gone. It’s easy enough to do.

She walks loudly enough to announce herself when she returns, and Steve opens his eyes to see her looking down at him over a tray of food.

“It’s not much,” she says. “Just a little bit so you can actually understand me when I’m talking to you. Okay?”

It takes him a few moments, but Steve first nods, and then after a few more minutes turns over onto his back. Natasha sits down next to him. When he turns his head to look at her, thank her maybe, she sticks a piece of bread in his mouth.

Reluctantly, Steve chews and swallows. He sits up enough that Natasha can transfer the tray to his lap. There’s a glass of water, some more bread, fruit and some cheese. Slowly, he eats all of it and drinks the water, all under Natasha’s watchful eye. 

When he’s finished, Natasha takes the tray from his lap, stands up and takes it over to the desk in the corner.

Steve is exhausted. He lets himself slump over, and she regards him from the desk, arms crossed over her chest.

“Do you want to sleep some more?” she asks. Her voice is gentle, and he hates that, that she’s being gentle with him. He hates it in a far-off, indistinct sort of way that he knows should bother him, but that’s too far away for him to really grasp as well.

He nods.

“Okay,” she agrees, still in that gentle voice. “We need to talk, Steve.”

“Okay,” he mumbles. His eyes are already falling shut, and everything is floating away again. It’s nice.

“I’ll wake you up in a little while.”

Steve thinks maybe he nods, but he’s already slipped away again, so maybe he doesn’t.

He feels vaguely more alive when Natasha wakes him up. Vaguely more like his brain is actually processing input. He kind of hates it.

Natasha’s chin is digging into his shoulder. Her arm is around his waist. It’s like she’s made herself extra pointy. He doesn’t know how she does it, but it stings.

It’s kind of nice, actually.

“Ugh, I hate you,” he mumbles.

Natasha shifts a little, so her chin isn’t so pointy. She squeezes him.

Steve lets himself enjoy being held for a few minutes. Just for a little while, before he starts feeling bad for feeling good. For now, he’s grateful that Natasha is letting him have this, that she’s giving him comfort, even if he definitely doesn’t deserve it. He’s pretty sure he knows what she wants, why she’s here, but she’s easing him into it, and he appreciates it.

“I’m sorry about Bucky,” she says, after a little while. Their breathing has fallen into sync, and he wonders if she’d done that on purpose.

It’s something Bucky used to do, when Steve was upset or hurting or having an asthma attack.

“Yeah,” Steve manages to choke out. “Me too.”

“It’s kind of a dick move.” 

Steve chuckles, watery.

“I don’t really think he’d want you to let yourself waste away.”

“Well he’s not here to fucking stop me, so it doesn’t matter what he’d want, does it?”

She is silent for a moment, and gives him another squeeze before she says, “Wow, that is impressively bitter, Steve.”

“Well, my world is pretty much fucked, so.”

“How about we unfuck it a little, then?”

Steve twists around and looks at her. Really looks. Natasha looks tired. Care-worn. She’s been having a hard time, too. All of her friends are scattered to the wind. 

He lifts an eyebrow at her instead of asking.

“T’Challa knows where the UN stuck the half of our team they arrested,” Natasha says. “Wanna help me bust them out?”

Steve finds his first smile in days, maybe weeks. Maybe since all this started, since he’d gone looking for Bucky in Bucharest. “Yeah. I think I do.”

Natasha smiles back. “Good, because Sam would legit never let you live it down if you didn’t help bust his ass out of the super duper jail they’re all in.”

“True,” Steve agrees.

Natasha sobers. “It’s pretty bad, Steve. You’re not gonna like it.”

Steve takes a deep breath, and tries to do something like bracing himself. “Okay.”

Natasha sits up. “Why don’t you go shower, and then we’ll get started. You smell, Steve. It’s pretty gross.” She wrinkles her nose at him.

Steve sniffs at himself and yeah, he smells pretty rank. Now that he’s noticed it, it’s going to be impossible to ignore. He wrinkles his own nose. “Yeah, okay.”

“Good. Want more food?”

Steve stands up slowly, assessing himself. He’s not hungry, or at least he’s not feeling it yet, but if he’s going to start planning, if they’re gonna do this, he’ll need to be able to act, to use his body, to think, no matter how much he wants to crawl back into bed and tell the world to go fuck itself. 

He deserves to be able to do that, doesn’t he?

So. Yeah. 

“Yeah, more food is probably good.”

Natasha nods. “Okay. Go clean up. I’ll get some grub and let T’Challa know we’re going to start planning.”

In the bathroom, Steve turns on the ridiculous rain-style shower and turns the heat up as high as he thinks he’ll be able to stand it. He takes off his clothes and looks at himself in the mirror. He looks… carved away. He doesn’t like it. There are shadows under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks he’s not used to seeing anymore, and the bruises and scrapes Tony had left behind are gone.

So it’s been a few days, then. Since Bucky left him.

Steve steps into the shower, turns the heat up some more, and wills the water to wash away his thoughts, wash him clean and blank.

\----

It takes them several hours to plan, between the two of them and T’Challa. By the time everything has been sorted out and put into place, Steve is both exhausted and furious.

He wants to hit things almost as much as he wants to go back to the hiding in bed thing. 

Natasha follows him back to his suite. She crosses her arms and leans against the wall, watching him pace.

He can feel her eyes on him. He wants to lash out. He wants to scream and rage and bleed.

He kind of wants to cry.

Or just hit things.

Hitting things sounds good.

“I hear there’s a nice gym here,” she says, after a while. Steve is still pacing, and growling.

Steve stops pacing and growling and looks at her, and he must look pretty bad, because she doesn’t make him ask.

“Go get changed. I’ll let you try to beat the shit out of me for a while.”

Steve can feel his shoulders slump in relief.

It’s a good distraction, sparring. Sparring with Natasha. What he has on her in strength, she has on him in agility and cunning and plain skill. It evens them out pretty well, and she hits like a fucking sack of bricks, and by the time they’re finished, they’re both drenched in sweat, sore and bruised.

“I think I’m going to shower and eat and go to bed,” Steve says, words coming slow, as they walk back to the suites of rooms where they’re staying. He’s going to force himself to eat regularly for the next few days, until they can put their plan into motion.

“Okay,” Natasha agrees, almost too easily. “Me too, I think.”

They part ways at Steve’s door, and Steve doesn’t let himself ask her if she would be willing to maybe sleep with him, just sleep, just for a little while. He doesn’t want to impose upon her, upon her friendship.

\----

“You’re an idiot, Steve,” she says softly, as she’s pulling back the covers of the bed and sliding in beside him.

He hadn’t heard her come into the room. He hadn’t known she was there until she spoke. He chokes on a laugh or a sob or maybe just his breath.

“Come over here and cuddle with me a while,” she says. Orders, really. Steve is grateful for it; it’s easy to just obey. He turns over and settles into Natasha’s space, settles against her slight, strong body. She smells clean and good. Her hair is still a little damp. She puts her arms around him.

“Sleep now,” she says. “I’ll keep watch.”

Steve obeys.

\----

Natasha is still there the next morning, dozing beside him, her face tucked against his back between his shoulders, her arms tight around his waist. It’s nice. It’s comforting. He shouldn’t need it the way he does, and Steve takes a deep breath and stretches slowly. She stirs against him, grumbles and tightens her arms.

“Stop fidgeting,” she mutters against his back.

Steve obeys. 

\----

But she keeps watching him, over the next couple of days, while they work on finalizing their plans. She watches him always, and Steve knows she _sees_ him, all of his ugly selfishness about Bucky, all of his pain and mourning and the way it’s so jumbled up in his head. She sees why he wants to crawl back into bed and never leave it again; why he’s willing to just waste away right now.

She’s quietly kicking his ass out of it, because she sees it. Because she is his friend. He’s grateful, and he also really hates it.

“You’re allowed to feel how you feel,” she says out of the blue, the night before they’re set to leave. She’s sitting on his bed, because she keeps just showing up at the end of the day and snuggling with him while he sleeps. He’s never asked, and she’s never brought it up, she just shows up each night and it’s so nice that Steve has possibly shed a tear or two over it. In the shower. When he’s by himself and he can fool himself into thinking he’s not.

Steve’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“You’re allowed to be angry at Bucky for leaving you,” she adds. “Even though he did it for his own reasons and you’re allowing him the choice, you can still be torn up about it. It doesn’t make you a bad person, Steve.”

Steve snorts. “Doesn’t it?”

“No,” she replies: simple, unadorned.

“I don’t think I agree with you.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong. You think I’m not pissed at Clint right now?”

Steve looks at her. “You are?”

“Of course I am. More so than usual, I mean.”

“Why?”

Natasha laughs, mirthless. “Because he chose--”

“My side?” Steve finishes.

“No,” she insists. “I’m not mad that he chose your side Steve. I’m mad that he chose not _my_ side. And it’s a stupid thing to be mad about because honestly the whole thing's a mess but I’m still mad about it. I’m not going to take it out on him, much, but I’m still angry. You feel how you feel. There’s no right or wrong there.”

“Ugh,” Steve says, eloquently.

Natasha nods. “Stop beating yourself up over the way you feel. It’s exhausting to watch.”

Steve takes a deep breath. “I’ll try. Okay?”

She gives him a narrow look. “As long as you actually try.”

\----

The afternoon before they’re due to leave for the Raft, Natasha disappears for a while. Steve notices because she’s been his shadow since she arrived, and he misses her as soon as she’s gone. 

It makes him feel pathetic, how alone he feels, how quickly.

Still, he tries not to seem too eager when he catches a glimpse of her later in the afternoon. 

And he breathes a sigh of relief when she joins him for dinner. He’s been doing well, under her watchful eye, eating regularly, eating almost as much as he really needs. He’s been sleeping a more normal amount, and they’ve been spending time in the gym everyday, too. Before she sits, she hands him a shopping bag.

“Gotcha something, Rogers,” she says.

Steve glances from her to the bag and back up to her. “Why?”

She shrugs, gives the bag a little shake. “Take it. Consider it an early birthday present or something.”

Steve takes the bag from her and looks inside. There’s a sketchbook in it; he notices that right away. 

Natasha sits down across from him and makes a little gesture at him, to go on. He pulls the sketchbook out and flips through it.

“It’s nothing special,” Natasha says, “but I know you used to draw. Thought you might try to get back to it, if you want.”

Steve looks at her. “Thank you, Natasha.”

She nods, and gestures again. Steve looks back in the bag and pulls out a small set of colored pencils, and then a few brushes and a set of watercolors.

“All of the paints and pencils are locally made,” Natasha says. “I thought you might like that.”

Steve takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, blinking rapidly against the tears gathering in his eyes. “Thank you,” he says again. “This is wonderful.”

Natasha smiles at him, a gentle smile that he’s only seen her wear once or twice. It’s genuine, not one of her many and varied smiles and masks. “I’m glad you like it, Steve.”

\----

“Man, took you long enough,” Sam says, as they’re picking their way through the Raft back to where Natasha is waiting with the quinjet, stepping carefully over prone, unconscious soldiers. 

It’s the only thing any of them has said so far.

Clint, somewhere behind them, snorts. Scott possibly giggles a little bit. He sounds a little hysterical, and Steve smothers the desire to join in; he feels a little hysterical as well. He’s really not sure how he’s keeping it together. After everything they’ve gone through, for _him_ , they all ended up here. It’s not _right_.

Wanda still doesn’t speak. She doesn’t seem to react at all, but he feels her hand against his back, just for a moment, and it settles him, just enough. She is walking close by Steve’s side, and he thinks maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe. Or at least a sign of hope, that she’s not completely gone.

In the jet, Clint sits next to Natasha, in the pilot seat. Natasha looks over at him and smiles a little. She’s wearing the little arrow necklace Steve hasn’t seen her wear in a long time, and Clint smiles back at her. Then she punches his arm, and he winces, but he also grins at her. Steve breathes a secret sigh of relief; if Natasha and Clint are cool, then things are okay. Or will be.

Eventually.

Steve sits next to Wanda, and Sam sits on his other side, leans against him heavily. Scott sits down across from them. He crosses his arms and shuts his eyes, and is asleep about three seconds later.

“Tic tac can sleep anywhere,” Sam mutters. He sounds jealous.

Steve shifts a little in his seat, trying to make it so Sam can put his head on his shoulder, get comfortable, and Sam does with a muttered thanks. Steve tells himself he’s doing it for Sam, but he’s mostly doing it for himself. He wants his friends close to him. The weight of Sam’s head on his shoulder is grounding, comforting.

“You can sleep,” Steve says. “It’s a long flight.”

Sam grunts. He doesn’t say anything about being too antsy, too keyed up to sleep, but Steve understands. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep either.

Wanda settles against his side, and Steve puts his arm around her shoulders. She makes a little noise, but when Steve looks down at her, her face is shuttered, blank. 

“Where we headed?” Sam asks, after a while. He sounds drowsy.

“Wakanda,” Steve replies.

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

At some point during the flight, Wanda shifts again and slips her arms around Steve. Steve squeezes her shoulder a bit, and leans his head against hers.

\----

Steve has an immense fight with himself. He wants to spend time with his friends. They deserve for him to take care of them, as much as he can. T’Challa has put so many of his immense resources at Steve’s disposal, and Steve should stay with them, with his team.

But he also wants to go back to bed, back to not really eating, back to sleeping as much as possible. Not forever, he tells himself. Just for a little bit longer. And then he’ll be better. He’ll make himself better.

Just having them around should make him feel better, but all he sees is the hole left by Bucky. All he can feel is the emptiness that Bucky’s absence leaves, right in the middle of his chest, in the middle of his soul.

Natasha notices, of course. Of course she does. She knows him best of them all, and she is his friend. 

Also, she’s omniscient.

Steve’s almost certain of it.

She pulls him aside late in the afternoon of their first full day in Wakanda. Everyone has started to settle in; they’re all a little looser, a little bit more relaxed. Wanda has started speaking. Only one word answers to questions so far, but she’s been staying with everyone else, sticking close by Sam’s or Steve’s side. She watches Natasha draw Steve away with knowing eyes.

Natasha waits for Steve to settle a bit, for him to really look at her before she speaks.

“Do you need to go, Steve?”

“No, I’m fine, Nat. I’m glad everyone’s here.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t ask if you were happy we’re all here and not in prison. I asked if you need to be alone for a little while.” She’s glaring at him. Steve feels it down to his bones.

He takes a deep breath. “Yeah.”

She jerks her head in the direction of the door. “Go. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Steve goes. He tries not to look like he’s fleeing, but he feels like he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would apologize for how unfinished this all feels, but then I only just realized today myself that it's kind of supposed to feel unfinished and messy because that's how things are. 
> 
> I will apologize that this is more painful than I meant it to be. That seems to happen a lot with me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still not having this beta'd. If there's anything super glaring you can point it out, but I won't promise to fix it. ;)
> 
> Anyway, enjoy! Let me know what you think!

The first sensations that come to him are warmth and softness, and those alone are enough for him to know that he’s elsewhere, enough to keep him from leaping straight into panic.

He’s not restrained.

There is a blanket over him. 

A pillow beneath his head.

Everything smells clean, but not quite like a hospital. 

His left side feels too light, and memory starts to trickle in, as he sifts slowly towards consciousness. Memory. He still has memory, he remembers things. He remembers Steve.

Steve.

_Steve._

**Steve.**

A voice starts to filter through, calmly speaking, telling him where he is and that he’s safe, that he doesn’t need to comply but it would be totally awesome if he didn’t come off the bed swinging because, “Yo I really like my gorgeous face the way it is Barnes, I’d really appreciate it if you stay chill-- OK bad choice of words but I would really like you a helluva lot more if you don’t take a swing at me as soon as you wake up. Steve’s alive, Steve is safe, Steve isn’t here because that was your request for today. Why did you want to be woken up today of all days anyway? King Cat says you were real specific about that.”

Bucky groans a little. “Shut the fuck up, Wilson,” he says. Or whispers, really. His voice doesn’t quite work, but that’s barely worth noting; his voice never quite works fresh out of cryo. 

He listens as Sam moves around the room. There’s light against his eyes, but it’s soft. He still isn’t really ready to open them. Or capable, if he’s being honest. His eyesight is always wonky and off when he comes out, and he’s not looking forward to everything being blurry. It messes with his head, with his equilibrium.

“Here, man, open up, your voice is shredded.”

Bucky listens because despite himself he trusts Sam Wilson. He doesn’t really want to, but Sam is people. Sam is Steve’s people, and god it’s awful but that makes him family.

He reminds Bucky a little bit of Morita, a little bit of one of Bucky’s sisters. Becca, maybe. She’d always had a sharp tongue and a sharper fist (Morita had those things as well, for all he was their medic). He’d doted on her, even though they’d fought light cats and dogs. No one but Bucky was allowed to mess with Becca.

Ugh, fucking Wilson.

But Bucky opens his mouth a bit, and sips from the straw when it’s placed against his lips. Coolness against his tongue, like mercy. He takes a few sips and stops, because he knows what his body will do, coming out of cryo.

It’s enough.

“How is he?” Bucky mumbles.

He listens to Sam put the glass down and sit again. He sighs before he speaks. “Not gonna lie man, ya boy is not doing great.”

Bucky’s heart rate spikes immediately, and he starts struggling to open his eyes, to sit up. Hands on his shoulders, pushing him back down. He doesn’t have the strength to fight. Not yet.

“Not like that, Barnes! Stop!”

Bucky stops.

“I mean he misses you, you asshole. He’s hella depressed, and none of us are gonna be the ones to bring him out of it. Shit, you’re not even gonna be able to do that, he’s gotta do it for himself, although a lot of therapy would help with that if he’d just fucking listen for once jesus, but god forbid the stubborn asshole listen to anyone.”

Bucky finds a bit of a smile.

“Yeah yeah yeah, he’s been like this since nineteen fucking whatever, I know, I know. I know. Fuck.”

Bucky leans back against the bed and shuts his eyes, concentrating for a few moments on his breathing. He won’t do Stevie a lick of good if he rushes this. He won’t be able to give Steve the birthday he deserves if he can’t fucking walk. Or talk. 

Eventually, he opens his eyes again and looks at Sam, who’s made himself comfortable in the chair next to Bucky’s bed again. He looks tired. Worried. Bucky’s not sure if it’s him that Sam worries for, or Steve.

Or maybe both. Sam seems like the kind of fella who cares about his friend’s friends. 

Ugh, Wilson.

“Tell me,” he murmurs.

Sam looks at him for a moment, before he speaks. “Yeah, okay. So, it’s November 2016. You’ve been down for several months now. Obviously since I’m sitting here talking to you Steve came and busted us out of the clink. Natasha helped. Most of us are staying here in Wakanda now because we’re all super high on a bunch of wanted lists but T’Challa basically laughs in the face of the CIA and the UN because he’s badass like that--”

Bucky is pretty sure Sam is rambling a little bit because he’s nervous about something, but he doesn’t know what it is and besides, Sam’s voice is really soothing. As much as he hates the guy, it’s nice to listen to him speak.

“King Cat gave us all a place to stay. Like, a house. It’s nice. It has a garden. Wakandan veggies are pretty tasty. It’s mostly me and Wanda and Scott rattling around in there, most of the time. Scott misses his kid. Wanda misses her brother. I miss my mama. Clint comes and goes with Natasha; they’re off doing spy stuff or working with Fury or god only knows what, I can’t keep up with Natasha’s brain. I’m pretty sure she’s omniscient.”

Bucky smiles a little. Steve thinks the same thing. Bucky’s just fairly certain he remembers her, sort of, as a little girl in a leotard and pink tights. She’s no more omniscient than he is, but he thinks they probably think the same way, observe the same way. It makes him a little nervous, but not in a bad way.

“Steve’s been painting a lot,” Sam goes on. “We don’t really see a whole lot of him; he comes out for dinner once a week, maybe? But other than that, we don’t see him. I’ve tried, man. I keep trying. I will keep trying, but he’s done a pretty good job of shutting all of us out. I mean, he turns it on as much as he needs to when we’re around, but it’s all a show. You know?”

Bucky nods, and sighs. He’d been afraid of this; Steve has always been good at shutting people out, at pretending that he’s okay when he’s really not. He has such a hard time asking for help, or accepting it when it’s offered, and he’s always felts like he has to be strong, for everyone around him, and that he shouldn’t burden anyone with his thoughts or feelings or issues. He’s always been that way, he’s never believed he deserves to be taken care of a little bit, sometimes. Even Bucky hasn’t always been able to get through to him. It had taken him months to chip away at Steve’s walls after his mom had died. He’d nearly given up hope several times.

He’s not sure he’s going to be able to do it this time, either. Not in one day. He’s at least half-certain that deciding to go back under may have been the final nail in the coffin of their friendship. No matter how desperately Steve had kissed him, before. 

“So why now?” Sam asks. 

Bucky looks at him, shrugs.

“Nah, man. You were super specific about being woken up for November 10th. What’s November 10th?”

Does Sam not know? Does Steve tell no one anymore? He used to be so easily aggravated over it, when the Commandos had teased him. _Oh, Stevie._

“Birthday,” he mutters.

Sam’s eyes go wide, and then confused. “Whose birthday?”

OK, Steve definitely hasn’t told anyone.

“Steve’s.”

Sam blinks, brow furrowed. “I thought his birthday was July 4th?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, that’s Captain America’s birthday. Did you really think Steve was born on the fourth of July?”

“...Yes?”

Bucky snorts. “Idiot.”

Sam glares at him.

“So you’re telling me tomorrow is Steve Rogers’s birthday?”

“Yup.”

“Well,” Sam says. He sounds sort of dumbstruck. Bucky smiles a little. “What the fuck.”

“Where is he?” Bucky asks, because he really doesn’t have an answer to Sam’s question.

“Probably the same place as always.” Sam shrugs.

Bucky glares at him, and he must not be very scary anymore, because Sam just grins at him in response. “Which is?”

“The studio he set up. In the suite you guys were staying when you first got here. Or else wandering in the jungle; T’Challa says he does that a lot, too.”

Bucky nods, and starts to sit up. Slowly, so as not to jostle himself too much. His equilibrium is still a little off, but it’s good enough. Sam stands and watches him.

“What are you doing?”

“The fuck’s it look like I’m doing, Wilson?”

“It looks like you’re going to go limping off to find Steve and beat the shit out of him, honestly.”

Bucky grins. “Something like that.”

“I think your doctors want to do some tests before you leave, man.”

“Fuck that.”

Sam chuckles. Bucky isn’t looking directly at him, but he can hear the eye roll when Sam speaks, “You two are peas in a goddamn pod.”

“Help me stand up, jerk,” Bucky says, and it hurts a little that he needs the help just to stand but he comforts himself with the fact that he feels fantastic, compared to every other goddamn time he’s ever come out of cryo so he’ll take all of this as a win.

Sam helps him stand up, and hangs on to his arm for a minute or three while he relearns standing and balance and whatnot. He doesn’t even say anything, doesn’t make fun of Bucky at all, and Bucky remembers that Sam was a counselor before he was a superhero, and he thinks maybe Sam might be his friend after all.

Maybe Sam can help him. Help him help himself. Help him force Steve into helping himself a little, too. Although the painting is probably doing a world of good for Steve, Bucky knows that drawing was always Steve’s best outlet. Steve was always emotionally honest in his drawings, and he wants to see what Steve’s been feeling in his paintings.

“Where’s Steve?” he asks again, when he can stand on his own. He nods, and Sam lets go of his arm and steps back.

“Probably right where you left him.”

Bucky gives him a look. “That’s low, Wilson.”

Sam shrugs. “Want me to walk with you?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah. Please.”

They set off together, slow and deliberate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this was going to be much longer, but then I realized it was its own chapter without what comes next, so apologies for the slight delay in the cuddling. And that it's so short. Hopefully it won't be too long before Bucky gets to aggressively cuddle Steve.
> 
> Thanks to Politzania for letting me bounce around the idea of splitting this up before posting.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I was going to try to make all of this one chapter but then it got to be over 4k words so I decided to break it up. I'm also sorry that even the cuddling in this fic isn't particularly fluffy/happy. One day I'll manage that.

They meet T’Challa in the hall, almost all the way to the suite of rooms that Steve occupies ( Bucky doesn’t kid himself that Steve is actually living his life right now, he doesn’t have to be a genius to know that’s not happening, he just has to know Steve, and if there’s anything he’s an expert on, besides all the languages and violence Hydra left him with, it’s Steven Grant Rogers. He’s ever so good at being a spectator to his own life). T’Challa is carrying a box, and he has one eyebrow raised in question at them. 

Sam is talking to him, “Steve’s supposed to come over for dinner tomorrow, but I’ll text him, in the morning or something and let him know it’s cool to wait til this weekend instead. Tell him happy birthday from us, okay? From everyone. We’ll make him a cake; Scott’s actually a pretty good baker so I’m sure we can come up with something.”

They’re walking slowly, because Bucky is still not quite steady on his feet. He should be okay soon, though. Or at least okay enough to pretend he’s fine. Which he’ll go with. Steve’s not the only one capable of putting on a show when things aren’t awesome.

The king of Wakanda stops before them and smiles a little. “It is good to see you up and about, James,” he says.

Bucky nods at him. He doesn’t really agree, but needs must. He’d been adamant on being woken up for Steve’s birthday for a reason, after all.

T’Challa lifts the box he holds a little. “This arrived today, for Captain Rogers. I was going to deliver it to his suite.”

“We’re headed that way, too,” Sam says.

Bucky just nods.

“I will accompany you, if you don’t mind?”

Bucky nods again.

“I do believe that Steve has gone for a walk this afternoon,” T’Challa says as they walk slowly down the hall. “Do you wish to wait for him to return, James? Or would you like to join me for an evening meal? Sam, you’re welcome as well.”

“I’ll wait,” Bucky says. He’ll wait as long as he needs. “Thank you, though.”

The rest of the walk is silent, though companionable. Sam is practically hovering at his side, making sure he doesn’t just fall over. He’s still off-balance, but that’s probably more down to the missing arm that he’s spent so long compensating for the weight of than the recent defrosting.

The king hands off the package he’s been holding to Sam at the door. Bucky steps into the dimly lit room on his own and turns, nodding to T’Challa and Sam. Sam hands him the package, which is more than a little awkward, but he manages. 

And then he’s alone. Alone in the rooms he’d shared with Steve, before. It feels different in here, now. It feels… lonely. Abandoned, almost. 

Except for the paintings. They’re strewn about, carelessly propped against the walls, in various states of finished.

Bucky dumps the box on the table in the little kitchenette and forgets about it pretty much immediately. He wanders through the apartment, trying to find some indication that Steve actually lives here, but there’s nothing, really. No personalization, no clutter. Nothing except the paintings.

“Oh, Stevie,” he murmurs.

He says it again when he finds Steve’s studio, the spare room, the one with the wall of windows. He wanders around the room in the gloaming, just taking in everything, trying not to let it overwhelm him.

This is where Steve lives; it looks like he’s been sleeping on the couch. Bucky takes everything in, and then he leaves the room, shutting the door softly behind him. He works his way back through the apartment, turning on lights as he goes, heading for the bedroom. Steve’s room. The one where they’d spent the last night before he went into cryo.

It looks the same. Steve probably hasn’t been in here since then.

The sheets smell a little musty, but not awful. Maybe there’s been some sort of cleaning service in since he’d gone under? He can’t tell for sure, but he does his best to shake the sheets out and resettle them. 

He’s not trying to share a couch with Steve tonight. There’s no way they’d both fit.

Steve probably doesn’t even really fit on that couch. It’s not that big. No matter how he curls himself up, Steve isn’t the little guy he used to be anymore.

They’re both so changed, from who they used to be.

Bucky misses that little guy still. But then, he’s pretty sure Steve misses the carefree, happy kid he’d maybe once been too. He misses this Steve too, the new one, the one who’s fragile, broken in so many subtle ways, and so lonely, wearing his mask like he wears the shield, but still intent on doing what’s right. 

He thinks of the paintings Steve’s been creating and thinks, maybe, that this new Steve misses him, too. Misses the broken, shattered bits of the man who used to be Bucky Barnes, cobbled together by the tatters of the Winter Soldier. Held together with duct tape and prayers to a god he no longer believes in, and long stints in cryo-freeze.

He’d never thought that Steve had needed him. He’d always been certain of it, that Steve hadn’t needed him the way Bucky needed Steve. Steve had always been so sure of himself, so intent on doing what needed to be done, and Bucky had needed him so desperately, before. He’d followed Steve around like his shadow, through thick and thin. Finished all the fights that Steve wasn’t able to. Devoted himself to Steve, body and soul, and Steve hadn’t ever really noticed.

Oh sure, Steve had been a friend, and a good one. But Steve’s head was always in the clouds, always on what was Right and Just and Needed To Be Done, and he hadn’t needed Bucky around except to keep him from tripping over things and to tend to him when he was sick. Keep him in bed when necessary.

But here. Now. Thinking about the raw emotion in those paintings, the terror and anger and deep, aching sadness. Bucky thinks _maybe_. Just maybe he’d been blind as well, and Steve had needed him. Does need him.

Maybe this has been a huge mistake.

Bucky sighs and rubs his forehead. This is all too much to think about right now. He has a mission, tonight and tomorrow. It’s a simple mission, probably his original mission: take care of Steve. 

He goes through the apartment again, tidying what little mess there is. Mostly he just rearranges things a little. He finds the food he’d requested in the kitchen, and he pours himself a glass of water to drink while he waits.

He waits for a long time. It’s long past dark when he hears the doorknob turn, and Bucky breathes a sigh of relief, that Steve is finally back from his walk. It must have been a long walk. Bucky glances around in those last few seconds before Steve steps through the door for a clock, but he doesn’t see one.

Steve stops short when he sees Bucky. Stops short and gapes at him. Gapes for a long moment, and then blinks. Blinks repeatedly, rapidly. Like he’s trying to clear his vision. Like he’s trying to convince himself that Bucky is really there.

“Buck?” Steve questions, and Bucky crosses the room to him, lifts his hand to Steve’s face, lays it gently against his cheek. 

_See? You feel that? I’m real. I’m here._

“I’m here, Stevie.”

He can see the tears pooling in Steve’s eyes. Pooling, and spilling over, and he moves his thumb to swipe one away. Steve swipes at the other, almost violently, and turns his head, looking away from Bucky.

“I’m sorry, Stevie,” Bucky says. “I’m sorry.”

“Buck,” Steve says again, and it is a sob, a plea. 

Bucky slides his hand around Steve’s neck and pulls him in, pulls Steve down against him. Steve’s arms go around him, easy as anything, easy as breathing. Bucky doesn’t know how long they stand there, rooted to that spot in the middle of the little apartment in Wakanda. He doesn’t care. Steve’s arms are tight around him, so tight it’s a little bit hard to breathe, but that’s good, it feels good to have to work for breath. Steve’s arms are tight around him, and Steve’s tears are hot against his neck, his breaths ragged against his collarbone, and Bucky feels alive.

For the first time in a long time, he feels alive. Present.

It’s painful.

But that’s life.

Steve’s arms are so tight around him, and Steve is shaking, a fine tremor that keeps running through him; Bucky feels it every time. He keeps making noises, tiny choked sounds of pain, of anguish, and Bucky shushes him each time, gentle. He moves his hand, from Steve’s neck to his head, running his fingers through his hair, petting him, squeezing his neck. He can’t wrap his arms around Steve like he wants to, can’t embrace him the way he deserves to be embraced.

“I know,” he keeps murmuring, and he does. He does know, and he’s been running from it, from this for so long.

He’s probably going to keep running, just for a little while longer. Until it’s safe, for him to be around Steve for more than a day or two at a time.

Just a little while longer, hopefully.

Eventually, Steve stops sobbing against his neck, and takes a deep, deep breath, one of those cleansing end-of-a-good-cry breaths, and lets it out slowly. Bucky mirrors him, takes his own deep breath. Steve lets go and steps back, wiping at his face, looking anywhere but at Bucky.

Bucky tries to catch his eye, but he looks away. 

“Okay,” he says, softly. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Water,” Steve murmurs, and he just stands there, looking at the floor, listing gently to one side, while Bucky goes and gets them both a glass of water. 

Well, he gets Steve a glass of water, and then goes back and gets himself one, too. When he returns, Steve has finished his water and is twisting the glass between his hands.

Bucky finishes his water and puts his glass down, takes the glass Steve’s holding from him and puts that one down too. He holds out his hand. 

Steve looks up at him through his lashes, and takes his hand.

“I saw your paintings,” Bucky says, looking down at their joined hands, and when he looks up again Steve is looking at him, gaping at him again, his eyes wide and terrified, like he expects to be rejected, rebuked. Torn down, broken. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, again. He’s going to be saying it a lot, he thinks. Probably for the rest of his life. Hopefully for the rest of his life.

“Bucky, no--”

“I never knew,” he goes on, cutting Steve off. “I never thought you could possibly need me, not the way I need you.”

“What.”

Steve seems disbelieving, so Bucky tugs at him a little, and leads him to the studio, where most of Steve’s paintings are. He leads Steve to the middle of the room and stops, tugs at Steve until he’s standing in front of him. 

“I see you,” Bucky says, keeping his voice soft. “I see all of you, especially here.”

Steve takes a deep, shaky breath. He still looks scared, but not as terrified as before.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Bucky goes on, because he needs to get all of this out, because he cannot stop yet, hurting Steve. He has to go back into cryo the day after tomorrow, and that will hurt Steve yet again.

“I’m sorry I keep hurting you,” he finishes.

Steve takes another breath, still shaky, but he nods. Bucky moves, stepping forward and leaning into Steve, slipping his arm around Steve’s waist and pressing his face against Steve’s neck, where he can smell sweat and the jungle and _Steve_. He flattens his hand against Steve’s back, but doesn’t hold on tightly.

For a few moments, Steve is stiff, unresponsive, and Bucky wants to quail but he holds on. Steve is Steve; he may be new, he may be a different person than the boy Bucky loved practically his whole life, but he knows Steve. At his core, he knows Steve, just like Steve knows him, despite the many millions of pieces he is in. They are both vastly changed, not the same boys they were, and yet somehow still the same, in some fundamental way that each of them recognizes, resonates with, can’t leave alone.

Steve is all that he has left, of his old life. Of his life, full stop. And though Steve is surrounded with people who care about him, with friends and teammates, Bucky suspects that Steve is so hurt by his own leave takings because Bucky is all that Steve has left to hold onto, of the person he remembers being.

Steve’s arms go around him again, flat against his back the way his hand is flat against Steve’s, and Steve holds him back. Gentle. He holds Bucky as though he is something precious, worth cherishing, and Bucky desperately hopes that Steve will hold him like that forever.

The hug, however soft and stretched and cherished it may be, doesn’t last forever.

Steve seems slightly less fragile, when he steps back again, slightly more present and put together. Bucky’s not sure that’s a good thing, that Steve has cobbled himself back together yet again, but he’s not going to try to knock Steve down anymore than he already has, just by being here.

“Let’s get something to eat,” Bucky suggests.

Steve shrugs and then says, “Okay.”

Bucky leads the way towards the kitchen. Steve walks at his side; he nudges his fingers against Bucky’s once, twice, and Bucky smiles just a little, hooks his fingers around Steve’s.

“I don’t think there’s much food here,” Steve says when they reach the kitchenette.

Bucky grins, just a little, just for a moment. “I took care of it.”

Steve tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. “You arranged this. Before.”

Bucky shrugs. “Happy Birthday, Stevie.”

“You’re a jerk,” Steve accuses.

Bucky smiles again. “Yeah, but I’m _your_ jerk, aren’t I?”

Steve blushes to the tips of his ears, looks away. Bucky squeezes his hand, once, and then lets go, starts gathering the food for their little snack-feast. Cheese and some fruit, various types of dried meat (the Wakandan version of salami is really tasty), and some cookies for a bit of sweetness. It takes him a little extra time, without his left arm, but he finds that he almost likes that it’s not there. He is much less a weapon without it. He almost feels like he’s only just a person, and it’s such a strange feeling. For the last two years, before Zemo, before Steve came for him, he’s been on tenterhooks, always ready for the other shoe to drop, always ready to be turned against himself again.

And it happened. And it’s over. He is just James Buchanan Barnes now. Here in Wakanda, with Steven Grant Rogers at his side.

Tomorrow is Steve’s birthday, and they will spend it together, like they did for almost all the years of their shared childhood, and then he will go back to sleep, until they can find a way to take the weapon out of his head, until they can give him back the choice, whether or not to be a weapon, or a person.

He wants to be a person. Just a person.

They eat in silence, for the most part. Steve keeps watching him, keeps reaching out and touching him, innocuous, gentle reminders to both of them that they’re both here, both alive and present. Bucky watches Steve back; he looks tired. He looks like he hasn’t been sleeping enough, and from the way he’s inhaling the food in front of him, like he hasn’t been eating enough either.

He’s not sure he’ll be able to convince Steve to take better care of himself while he’s gone; not in one day. But at least Steve doesn’t seem to have put up the walls for Bucky. There’s that, at least.

“Who’s the box from?” Steve asks, when the food is all gone. He’d eaten more than Bucky, but that settles Bucky, somehow. That feels right. Normal.

“Dunno,” Bucky replies. “T’Challa dropped it off when I got here. It’s for you, I imagine. No one’s sending me mail.”

Steve glances at the box again, and then shrugs and looks away. “I’ll open it later.”

Bucky looks at him. “You should open it now.”

Steve shrugs again. “I’ll do it later.”

“Okay,” Bucky concedes. “You should go shower then. You kinda smell.”

Steve chuckles. “Yeah. It’s hot outside.” But he goes, looking back at Bucky the whole way, like he thinks Bucky will disappear if he’s out of Steve’s sight.

While Steve’s in the shower, Bucky cleans up the kitchen as best he can, putting the food away and putting the dishes in the sink. Steve doesn’t take long, and Bucky knows that’s because he’s worried that Bucky is going to disappear. He comes out of the bathroom already dressed, rubbing the towel against his hair. It’s sticking up everywhere, and Bucky smiles at him.

“Your turn,” Steve says.

After Bucky’s showered and dressed himself in Steve’s clothes (better than wearing the scrub-like pajamas he’d been wearing in cryo), he goes back out to the living room. Steve’s sitting on the couch, staring at nothing. It’s getting pretty late; Bucky doesn’t feel particularly tired, but Steve looks exhausted. Like he’s been running himself ragged.

“Let’s go to bed,” Bucky suggests.

“I don’t think I could sleep right now if I wanted to,” Steve says. But he stands up, follows Bucky into the bedroom. “I haven’t slept here since you--”

“I know, Stevie. Since I left.” 

Bucky watches Steve as he moves around the room. He seems uncomfortable somehow. Nervous. About Bucky? About sharing a bed with him?

“I can take the couch,” Bucky suggests. “Or the other bedroom, I guess.”

“No,” Steve says immediately, urgently. “I don’t want that.”

“Okay. You seem a little uncomfortable, Steve.”

Steve shrugs. “Guess so.” 

Bucky watches him for a moment. Watches him shake himself, put the discomfort away, and turn to Bucky and smile a little. 

“I’m okay, Buck. Really.”

_No you’re not_ , Bucky thinks. But he’ll let it go for now. He doesn’t like that Steve is pretending with him, putting up those walls, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. 

He doesn’t have enough time to break through them, not right now. Not in one day. Not on Steve’s birthday. He doesn’t even know if he has the right to try to break through them. Maybe Steve doesn’t want him inside those walls anymore. 

All he can do right now is try to give Steve a good birthday. A happy birthday. Or at least a not unhappy one. 

Birthdays are hard. 

Steve isn’t going to make the first move here, not now. Perhaps it’s just that he’s no more sure how to treat Bucky right now than Bucky is sure how to treat Steve. Maybe they are both feeling the chasm between them. Maybe they both want to bridge it, but the people they are now don’t remember how.

He used to know how to get through to Steve. He wishes he still did.

He hopes there will be a time where he can relearn that skill.

Steve is not going to be the one to make the first move towards the bed, that much is certain. Obvious, even. So Bucky takes care of that, pulling back the covers and laying down. He doesn’t look at Steve, just shuts his eyes and puts his hand on his stomach, feeling himself breathe. He listens, though, as Steve paces the room one more time, twice, three times, before he sighs and lays down beside Bucky. Only then does Bucky open his eyes and turn his head to look at Steve.

“C’mere, Steve,” he murmurs.

Steve doesn’t hesitate; he turns over and drapes himself over Bucky, head on his shoulder, arm thrown across his waist. For a few minutes, they’re both quiet, breathing slowly falling into sync.

“What have you been doing?” Bucky asks, after a while. Neither of them is anywhere near sleep. Maybe in the falling darkness they’ll be able to talk more openly than usual. Maybe in the falling darkness here in this bed they will be able to create a little bubble of truth. Maybe it’ll be easier to speak when they’re not quite looking at each other.

“You saw it, Buck. Painting, mostly. I draw, too. I go for walks. I’ve been kinda… I dunno, down, I guess, since you’ve been gone.”

He can feel Steve shrug. No big deal. I’m incredibly depressed, but no big deal. Bucky slides his hand up and down Steve’s back, taking a moment before he speaks.

“Sam said. I wish I could make you better.”

Steve makes a noise. “Sam says I’m depressed and probably have PTSD.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to shrug. “We probably both do. We probably both are. I spent so much time just terrified; the whole last two years while I was on the run. Always looking over my shoulder, always scared. I still am. I can’t let go of that yet, because I know what can happen, because it’s already happened once. Who’s to say it won’t happen again. That’s why I went into cryo, Steve. You know that, right?”

(This is probably the most he’s said all at once in two years.)

“Buck, it’s your choice. I’m not going to take that away from you.”

“I know Stevie. And I know you hate it. I hate it too. I hate doing this to you. But I can’t take that risk. Not with you.”

“I can—“

“But I can’t. Not if it might hurt you. I couldn’t live with myself.”

Steve takes a shuddering breath. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Yeah, Stevie. Of course.”

“Okay. Do you want to defrost me for Christmas?”

Steve laughs, a terrible sound. “That’s awful, Buck.”

“But true.”

“You’re terrible.”

“That much hasn’t changed, at least.”

“I would like it if you woke up for Christmas, Buck. I don’t think they celebrate it here, though.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t. I could probably come out for a few days? That would probably be okay. We could have dinner with your friends. It would be nice for everyone.”

“Wanda’s Jewish.”

“Well we can do something for Hanukkah too. I bet if you asked, Natasha would come out.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees. “Let’s do that.”

“Okay,” Bucky agrees. He likes this. Likes having something to look forward to. “And then my birthday?”

“Of course. I was already planning on that, Buck.”

“Good. I’ll talk to the doctors and let them know. See if they want to do any tests or anything like that on one of these… sojourns.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees. Bucky can hear that he doesn’t like that, doesn’t like the intrusion of reality upon their crystalline, shining plans. But he can’t let reality go, not yet. Not here.

They keep talking for a long time, about anything, about everything. Bucky asks Steve about things he remembers, from Before. Steve tells him easily and in great detail, and they find that Bucky does remember quite a bit about growing up. He remembers Becca, and Alice and Grace. He remembers his sisters.

“I remember how angry my da was, when they took Gracie to be baptized. The priest wouldn’t let him baptize her Grace, so they added the Mary in front of it. He always hated when anyone called her anything other than Grace.”

“I never knew that, Buck.”

Bucky shrugs. “It never really seemed to be anything we’d need to talk about, when we were kids.”

“But now it’s a good memory.”

“But not it’s a good memory,” Bucky agrees.

Steve slips off quietly into sleep, his breath going deep and even, the lines on his face smoothing out, on what little bit of his face Bucky can see in the darkness. Bucky holds him as close as he is able, and keeps holding him, until he slips into sleep as well, between one breath and the next, entirely unaware of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *note the change in rating, yo*

One moment he’s asleep, the next he is awake. He stays still though, Steve mostly on top of him, breath hot against his neck, clearly still asleep. It’s a nice way to wake up, and he realizes slowly that he didn’t have any nightmares. He didn’t have any dreams at all, as far as he can tell. If he had any of either, they didn’t linger, and they didn’t leave any residue behind to taint him. It’s a relief so huge he’s pretty sure if he’d been standing he would’ve fallen over. 

“What do you want to do today?” Bucky asks when he feels Steve stirring, waking up. He’s been awake for a while, but he’s still thinking slowly, as though he’s not quite entirely awake. It’s strange, considering how long he’d been asleep, before yesterday.

“Mrmf,” is Steve’s oh-so-articulate answer.

Bucky laughs a little. “Okay, take your time.”

He dozes off again, waiting for Steve to wake up and decide what he wants to do for his birthday. Later, Steve says, “I don’t know. Not much, I think.”

“That sounds good to me.”

“Is there anything you want to do?”

“It’s your day, Stevie.”

Steve scowls at him. “I hate when you do that. I want to know if there’s anything you’re interested in doing.”

“Just spending time with you, punk.”

“Jerk,” Steve replies, but he’s smiling.

They eat breakfast, taking their time with it, with the food that Bucky had asked to have delivered for this day. Afterwards, they both suggest getting dressed, and they both decide against it with a speaking glance at each other, opting to stay in t-shirts and pajama pants instead.

Steve gets a couple of texts on his phone, after breakfast. He reads them and smiles, and puts his phone down without smiling.

“Well, everyone knows now.”

“I don’t know why you didn’t tell everyone before.”

Steve shrugs. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“But they’re your friends, Stevie. They’d want to know when your birthday is.”

Steve shrugs again. “We still celebrate it.”

“On the wrong day, Steve.”

“I like the fireworks.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Can we watch a movie or something?”

Bucky sighs, and lets it go. “Sure, what do you want to watch?”

They choose a movie, and settle on the couch. After the first one, Steve chooses another one, and then Bucky picks one that he thinks feels somehow familiar. He doesn’t know why it feels familiar, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to, so he tries not to think about it. It turns out to be pretty good though, so he lets the vague niggling sensation in the back of his mind go.

At some point in the afternoon, after they’ve eaten lunch and are settled in watching yet another movie, they end up tangled together on the couch, with Steve more or less on top of him, head on his shoulder, breath steady where he can feel it a little through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. Bucky’s not sure how it happened; he doesn’t care. He thinks maybe he made the first move, turned and stretched out, and Steve just followed him over, but maybe instead Steve pushed him over and stretched out on top of him instead. It doesn’t matter, either way, because they’re here, tangled up in each other on the couch. He has easy access to Steve’s hair, his neck and his back, and he takes full advantage, letting his hand wander between them where it may. For a long time, he pets Steve’s hair, and he’s pretty sure Steve would be purring if he could. He’s pretty sure Steve is only not asleep because he’s fighting it tooth and nail. Bucky himself dozes off and on, but every time his hand stops moving Steve starts to stir, starts to fret.

It’s nice. It’s quiet and calm and it feels amazing, having the weight of Steve on top of him. It’s reassuring, grounding. It holds him here in the present, and it reminds him of what he’s coming back to, each time he comes out of cryo. Every time he gets a little closer to coming out for the last time.

But it can’t last, this peacefulness they’re occupying. It can’t last any further than this day, not yet. Perhaps later, they’ll be able to stay here. But not now.

“There’s cake,” Bucky says, eventually. They’ve watched several movies, stretched out, tangled together on the couch. At this point, they’re shifted, and Steve is curled around him, warm all along his back and holding him tight.

Steve is breathing against his neck. Well, breathing. Breathing soft against the back of his neck with his lips just barely pressed to the skin there. Bucky wants to press into the contact. He also wonders how Steve doesn’t have a mouth full of hair, but that concern is far away, and amusing.

His neck is ticklish. It sends pleasant shivers through him.

“Oh?” Steve murmurs. His lips move against Bucky’s skin, and there’s a hint of wetness beyond breath now, almost a kiss. “Cake, huh?”

Bucky sighs in pleasure. “I am not the cake, Steve.”

“Darn.” But Steve is laughing; he can tell. Steve is laughing, shaking a little with it and kissing him, and Bucky wants to live in this moment.

“Is this what you wanna do for your birthday?”

“What’s that?” Steve murmurs against the side of his neck, where he’s now doing his best to leave a nice bruise, and it is shuddering through Bucky with each nip, with the pressure of Steve’s mouth.

“Spend the afternoon necking on the couch?”

Steve chuckles, low and soft. “They call it making out, now.”

“Oh, do they?”

“Yeah, and to answer your question, that sounds good to me, if you want to.”

“Yeah, I got nothing better to do.”

“Jerk.” But Steve is tugging at him, hands all over him, helping him turn over so they can kiss properly. The first kiss is almost tentative, like Steve still thinks Bucky is going to pull away, but Bucky has no intention of that. He shoves his hand into Steve’s hair and makes a breathless noise against Steve’s lips. He _wants_. He so desperately wants. He doesn’t think his body is going to cooperate as much as he’d like, but the desire is there.

Steve is kissing him desperately, making these little needy sounds into it, his hands everywhere, like he doesn’t believe Bucky is real, doesn’t believe he’s here, thinks he’ll disappear if Steve stops, if Steve lets go. Bucky tries to show him with his lips, with his tongue and the way he wraps himself around him that he isn’t going anywhere.

Well.

Not right now.

It’s almost enough to tear him out of the kiss, but Steve seems to sense it and all at once everything slows down, goes syrupy sweet and clinging. 

Kissing Steve is like coming home.

It makes his nerves shout. Bucky’s pretty sure he’s not really supposed to be doing any strenuous activity so soon before going back into cryo, but all he’s doing is laying on the couch being kissed within an inch of his life, so surely this doesn’t count even if his heart is racing. 

Steve is kissing down his neck now, adding to the bruise he’d started earlier, when he’d tipped them over into this. It still feels a little desperate, a little like Steve is trying to say goodbye without actually saying it, and Bucky has to tug him back up at that idea, press their lips together again, kiss Steve and kiss him and kiss him, until Steve is moaning into his mouth, the sounds settling in Bucky’s chest, where he wishes he could keep them forever.

“Buck,” Steve says, and it’s a sob, a plea, and Bucky shushes him.

“I know, Stevie, I know,” he murmurs, breaking the kiss just enough to reply. He strokes his hand through Steve’s hair, down his back, holds him as best he can. Steve takes a deep breath and lets his forehead rest against Bucky’s, and they just breathe together for a few moments. 

Bucky thinks maybe he’s not quite ready to stop though, not yet. He nuzzles at Steve’s lips, little brushes of lips against lips, skin on skin, teasing and light and barely there, and he smiles into it, grips tight on the back of Steve’s neck so he can’t change the angle, can’t change the kiss until Steve moans again, “Bucky, please.”

“Shh, shh,” he admonishes, still teasing, still barely kissing him, and he squeezes Steve’s neck again and Steve jerks against him.

“Oh,” Bucky murmurs, grinning up at Steve.

Steve scowls down at him, and shifts again. Bucky can feel him, half hard against his thigh, and he needs to see Steve come apart, he needs to take that with him.

“C’mon, Stevie,” he murmurs, and pulls Steve down into another kiss, searing this time. He doesn’t have enough hands to really do what he wants, but Bucky knows Steve. Knows how to get him really going. He wraps a leg around Steve’s hips, urging him into movement, works his other leg between Steve’s thighs, to give him something to rut against.

Steve moans into the kiss and obliges, and for a few moments it’s bliss. Steve’s hands are everywhere, all over him. Bucky feels like all his nerves are alight, everywhere Steve’s hands touch is sensitized, is alive and on fire. It feels amazing, even if--

Steve stops, lifts his head, brows drawn together, and Bucky sighs and looks away. Steve lifts himself off Bucky and sits back.

He is magnificent, rumpled and flushed and clearly aroused, and so, so confused. Because Bucky isn’t. 

“Buck?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath, and looks up at Steve. He lets himself be bared before him. Just looks at him.

“You okay?”

Bucky nods. He frowns a little, reaches out, feeling hesitant now where he hasn’t before. Steve slides his fingers between Bucky’s immediately and holds on, and Bucky is able to take another deep breath, steadier now.

“You’re not--”

Bucky frowns again. He shuts his eyes briefly, just for a moment. Just to gather himself enough to open them again and glare at Steve.

“I’m _fine_ , Steve. I-- well, no. I’m not fine. Obviously. But this--” he gestures between them, “this is something good, Steve. I feel good. You feel-- _amazing_. So even if this isn’t working--” Bucky gestures at himself this time, “this is.” He points at his head. “I want this, even if my body isn’t cooperating right now. Now get back down here.”

Steve blinks down at him for a minute. Processing, probably. Trying to sort out if it’s okay to enjoy himself even if Bucky’s not physically responding.

“Steve.” It comes out almost whiny. A plea. When Steve hesitates again, he plows on, “I want this. I want you to rub on me until you come in your pants like I always imagined when we were teenagers and I was listening to you jerk off across the room. Okay?”

Steve’s eyes go soft and fond, all the worry he’d wearing slipping away. “Yeah, Buck. Okay.” 

Bucky holds out his arm and Steve settles back down on top of him, slow and gentle, and they shift against each other, breathing each other’s breath and watching each other. Bucky gets one leg wrapped around Steve’s hip and the other between his thighs, and his hand on Steve’s frankly ridiculous ass, and Steve smiles a little at him and hums in pleasure.

“C’mon Stevie, _move_ ,” Bucky urges, arching up against Steve.

Steve nuzzles at him, nose against nose, his lips brushing over Bucky’s face, and even though he wants to Bucky refuses to shut his eyes. He needs to see this. He wants to take this with him.

Finally, Steve starts to move again, and Bucky urges him on. He gets to watch Steve fall apart above him, chasing his own pleasure, chasing orgasm. It is glorious to watch. It makes him feel reverent, like he’s witnessing the divine. Maybe he is. His vision is only a little blurry with tears when Steve gasps his name as he comes, saying it like a prayer.

\----

Later, much later, Bucky says, “I got you cake. I want cake.”

“You got me cake?”

“‘Course I did, punk, it’s your birthday.”

“What kind?”

“Did you know,” Bucky says instead of answering, “that red velvet cake these days isn’t red anymore unless they add a bunch of food coloring to it?”

“Yeah,” Steve replies. “Did you get me a red velvet cake?”

“Well, it’s not red.”

Steve groans, and it wouldn’t be obscene except Bucky just heard that moan a little while ago under much different circumstances.

“Help me get it?” he asks, instead of commenting on Steve’s lust for cake.

They get up from where they’d tangled themselves together in bed after cleaning up (showering together, that is) and go to the kitchen and get the cake. They get plates and forks and take the whole thing back to the bedroom. 

“I probably shouldn’t eat cake,” Bucky says, shoving a huge bite in his mouth. It’s really good. “But fuck it, I want cake.”

“Why shouldn’t you eat it?” Steve asks around his own mouthful of chocolatey goodness.

“It’ll probably do a number on my system while I’m--” Bucky cuts himself off. He doesn’t finish the sentence.

But Steve knows what he was going to say anyway, and ducks his head. He looks at the big piece on his plate, and he looks unsure.

Bucky takes another huge bite. “Keep eating, Steve. Don’t want this to go to waste. You know how I hate waste.”

“You’re full of shit,” Steve replies. He’s smiling a little, though.

Bucky chews and swallows his bite of cake and says, “I don’t want you to come with me to the lab tomorrow morning, Steve.”

“Bucky, no. I want to be there with you.”

“Steve,” he says. He stops, takes another bite of cake, because it’s really good cake and somehow grounding, chewing and swallowing the food. “I want you to stay here. I want you to remember me awake, you shouldn’t have that as your last memory of me. We had a good day today, right? I’m going under with good memories of you, and I want you to have good memories of me, too. I’m not saying this right.”

Steve shrugs. “No. I get it. I just wish I could be there for you, Buck.”

“You are, Stevie.”

Steve says quietly, “I don’t want you to go back under, Buck.”

Bucky sighs. He chews his way through the rest of his cake and cuts a second, smaller piece before he answers. “I’m so sick of being terrified,” he says, just as quiet as Steve. “I hate it. I want there to be a last time I go under. I want it to be sooner rather than later. But I can’t risk that, not yet. Not until we have a solution for all this bullshit in my head. I won’t risk hurting you anymore than I already am. I don’t want to do this without you. I can’t. I need to know you’re okay out here, Steve. And I can’t stay until that fear isn’t hanging over my head anymore.”

Steve looks at him, slowly takes another bite of his cake. At least he’s still eating. “You’re worth it,” he murmurs.

“I know you think that, but I know I can’t handle that fear all the time, with this hanging over my head like this. It will break me. More.”

Bucky stares down at his cake, at the fork clutched in his hand, knuckles white with how tight he’s gripping it. He keeps staring, until Steve reaches over and covers his hand with his own. Then he looks at Steve instead.

“Okay, Bucky. I’ll stay here tomorrow, if that’s what you want.”

Bucky nods, and blinks several times to clear away the tears that were threatening to fall.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. They both turn their attention back to their cake. Steve shovels through two more slices before either of them speaks again.

“Do something for me, while I’m gone?” Bucky asks eventually, when he’s had his fill of cake and is very nearly regretting that third slice (Steve is on his fourth now, and shows no signs of being done soon. He probably just doesn’t want to share with anyone else).

“What’s that?”

“Try to figure out how to be, if not happy, then at least okay. Without me.”

“What? NO, Buck.”

Bucky holds up his hand to forestall Steve going on, getting himself really worked up, and somehow Steve actually stops speaking.

“Not _without me_ without me, Stevie. Not like that. I just mean. You’ve got me, right? Til the end of the line, pal. But. On your own. For yourself. I don’t want you to depend on me for your happiness Stevie. Because I am not a real stable thing to lean on right now, and I probably won’t be for a long time. I know you’re happy you’ve got me, but I’m not the only thing you’ve got, you know? Try not to isolate yourself so much, and don’t deny it I know you are, I’ve seen this place. Talk to Sam. Ugh. He’s probably good at that shit. Talk to your friends. They care about you. It’s not a burden to talk to them, no matter how much you feel like it is. Go out. See the country. Paint me pictures of it to see at Christmas. Shit like that. Okay?”

“Okay,” Steve replies, and he’s not lying when he adds, “I’ll try.” 

Bucky breathes a sigh of relief. He feels much better going back under, knowing that Steve is going to try. It doesn’t matter that he’ll only be trying because Bucky asked, all that matters is that he try. His friends will help, if he lets them. “Also, you should go ahead and open that box because ten bucks it’s from Natasha.”

Steve looks in the general direction of where the box is still sitting on the table in the other room. “I never told her my birthday.”

Bucky gives Steve a look that feels familiar on his own face, a look like ‘you’re an idiot’. “You know she’s the black widow, right?”

Steve laughs, and it sounds a little lighter. “I’m gonna miss you, Buck.” 

“I know.”

“I’ll go get it,” Steve says. He gets up and gathers their plates and the remnants of the cake and takes all of it with him.

Bucky gets up while he’s gone and shakes out the sheets to get rid of the crumbs. Or some of them, at least. He stretches out on the bed and waits for Steve to return. He does in short order, holding the box. He sits down at Bucky’s hip on the bed and opens it. First he pulls out the card, reading it quickly and handing it to Bucky. Bucky glances at it, sees that he was right about the sender, and puts it down on the bed to watch as Steve goes through his present.

Natasha had sent him art supplies. Art supplies from all over, it looks like. A little bit of lots of different things, pencils and paper and pastels and charcoals and paint and watercolors. Several different sketchbooks, even a coloring book filled with intricate geometric designs that Steve spends a few minutes flipping through. He looks intrigued, a little smile playing at the corners of his lips. The last thing he pulls out are a pack of what looks like blank postcard-sized papers. Steve looks at them curiously, and turns the top one over. On the back, there’s a stamp and an address.

He looks over at Bucky with confusion on his face.

“I think she’s telling you not to mope around so much, Steve,” Bucky says.

Steve flips over a few more of the blank postcards. They’re all addressed to various post boxes around the world, to various aliases of Natasha. 

“She wants you to stay in touch, Steve.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “I think she does. This is nice.”

“I bet Wilson would go with you.”

“Go with me where?”

“On your road trip. Travel around, show her Wakanda. Show yourself Wakanda.”

When Steve looks at him, he just shrugs, and Steve gives him a look, but he goes back to looking at his new art supplies, smiling again after a moment.

“I want to hear about it, at Christmas. Okay, punk?”

Steve leans over and presses a soft kiss to Bucky’s lips. “Yeah, Buck. Okay.”

\----

In the morning, Bucky presses a soft kiss of his own to Steve’s lips. 

“I love you,” Steve says. He’s not crying, but only barely. Bucky is blinking rapidly to keep himself from giving in to tears. 

“I know,” Bucky replies, quoting one of the movies they’d watched yesterday. It makes Steve roll his eyes at him, but it lightens the mood just a little. Just enough that he can kiss Steve again and leave for the lab without either of them breaking down.

Steve catches him in the hall and pulls him into a massive hug. Bucky hangs on for dear life, for several minutes, just breathing Steve in, trying to memorize every bit of him he can, before he finally tears himself away and keeps going. He doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, surprise awkward sex! Hopefully not too awkward. Poor guys. 
> 
> Still not beta'd. Hopefully this chapter isn't too awkward because man I have an even harder time editing smut than I do writing it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Fun fact from last chapter: My great-grandfather wanted to name my grandmother (who was born right around the same time as Steve and Bucky, actually) Grace, but the priest at their church wouldn't allow her to be baptized Grace because it wasn't a name or something along those lines, so my great granddad stuck a Mary in front of it, because that's kind of a thing when you're Catholic. He still refused to call her anything but Grace, though. I was almost the third Mary Grace in a row, in which case I'd be a Gracie instead of a Lizzie.
> 
> (I love comments. You should leave me one!)
> 
> Next up: god only knows. Christmas, probably. T'Challa will find it all rather charming.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think there's only one more chapter after this! And then I'll probably go back to ignoring everything after TWS because that's how I do. Also I have this itch to explore how Bucky relearns himself and being a person. But with fluff. Because that's also how I do. 
> 
> (Although I guess that part could happen at any point and doesn't require me to ignore canon, but I really _like_ ignoring canon so.)

“Is it Christmas already?” Bucky rasps from the bed. He still hasn’t opened his eyes, but he’s been moving around like he’s waking up for about half an hour now.

“Not til Sunday,” Steve replies, and he can’t keep the relief and joy out of his voice.

Bucky smiles at him. “This bed is awful comfortable for a hospital bed.”

“Oh it’s not. I stole you.”

Bucky chuckles. “You’re a sap.”

“Yep. You gonna open your eyes anytime soon, Buck?”

“Soon,” Bucky murmurs. “Yeah. Eyes are always weird after waking up. Blurry. Throws me off.”

“Oh. Okay then, take your time, Bucky.”

“Gee, thanks doc.”

They’re both quiet for a few moments. Steve stretches himself out in the bed next to Bucky, and Bucky immediately turns toward him, reaching for him. Steve smiles, relieved that Bucky still wants to be near him, and wraps himself around his best friend (boyfriend? They never talked about it. Neither word is big enough to encompass all that Bucky is to him, all that he hopes he is to Bucky).

“Can we just do this for a few days?” Bucky asks eventually, muffled a little where he’s tucked his head in against Steve’s chest. Steve thinks maybe the light bugs his eyes and he’s trying to adjust slowly.

“Well, I had a whirlwind of activities planned but yeah, we can do this instead,” Steve replies, voice light. He feels light. He feels better than he’s felt since Bucky went back under last month, and he’s tried so hard to do as Bucky asked and learn a little of how to be okay on his own. He has been feeling better, if he’s honest with himself. Not fantastic, not as good as he feels right now with Bucky in his arms, but better. He has’t spent the whole month stewing in his own juices in bed, at least.

“Liar,” Bucky mumbles.

Steve laughs, and Bucky squeezes him closer.

“So what’s been going on?” Bucky asks a few moments later. “Tell me everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yeah, Stevie, everything.”

“Like, everything everything. You wanna know what I had for breakfast yesterday?”

Bucky lets go of him enough to punch him lightly in the back, but he gives himself away by rubbing Steve’s back immediately after, soothing to both of them. “Don’t be a jerk, Steve.”

Steve laughs a little. “Okay, okay. I’ll talk, you got me.”

Finally, finally Bucky looks up at him. His pupils are still a little bit wider than they should be, and he blinks a lot like things are still a bit blurry, but he smiles up at Steve and says softly, “Hi.”

Steve kisses him. He’d say he can’t help himself, but really he’s just wanted to do that since Bucky had walked away from him, last month, left him on his own to go back into cryo.

“Missed you,” he says, after.

Bucky smiles again. “I always miss you. Even when I don’t know myself I miss you.”

They smile at each other goofily for a minute.

“Now _tell_ me, dammit.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve says, and he pauses for a moment to gather his thoughts, before he starts speaking again. He tells Bucky about his month, about the day he’d allowed himself to spend in bed, before he got up again, and called Natasha first. Just to check in with her, but it had been nice to hear her voice. It had been good to make sure that she was okay. She’d been with Clint, with his family somewhere. She wouldn’t say where, because it wasn’t a secure line, but it made Steve happy to know that she wasn’t on her own.

She’d shown up with Clint and his whole family a few days later. They’re staying next to Sam and Scott and Wanda, neighbors who basically share the two houses between them. The kids love it, apparently. See it all as one big adventure, or vacation, or some combination of the two.

He’s been talking to Sam, and they’d gone on a fairly short road trip, just seeing sights close to the capital of Wakanda. Steve tells Bucky that he has a whole sketchbook filled with things to show him. He hasn’t been painting as much, because he hasn’t been staying cooped up in the apartment. He’s even spent a few nights out at the house with Sam and Scott and Wanda. 

It’s been nice. Steve doesn’t kid himself that he’s all better, nothing wrong anymore, and he doesn’t try to convince Bucky of it either because he knows that Bucky won’t believe him, always knows when he’s lying, but it’s been a nice reprieve. He’ll take whatever he can get right now, especially now that Bucky’s here to bolster him, just by breathing and being awake.

He’s even started thinking about maybe finding a therapist. When he tells Bucky this, Bucky squeezes him and says, “Good.” 

“I think Sam and T’Challa are vetting a few people for me. And for you, I think.”

“I’ll go if you go,” Bucky mumbles.

“Deal.”

The rest of the evening passes quietly. It takes most of the day to bring Bucky out of cryo, and he’s always exhausted afterwards, wants nothing more than a snack and to fall asleep. It seems odd to Steve, considering he’s trained himself to think of Bucky-in-cryo as asleep more than technically-medically-dead-and-frozen because the latter sends him straight into a panic attack, but he’s not going to push Bucky to further exhaustion or really to do anything other than whatever the fuck he wants.

What Bucky appears to want right now is to lay quietly in the circle of Steve’s arms, breathing him in and not talking much. Steve fills the silence enough for both of them, just telling Bucky about what’s been going on, both in his life and in the larger world. Not that he’s been paying much attention to that, but T’Challa and Sam both give him fairly regular updates, when he seems like he can handle it.

He doesn’t get those updates very often.

“You like this,” Bucky says, when Steve has fallen quiet for a few minutes. “Taking care of me.”

Steve shrugs a little. There’s no denying it. “Yeah, Buck. I do.”

“Why?”

He shrugs again. “You’re the only person I never minded taking care of me, before. It’s nice to be able to repay you a little bit, even if it’s under shitty circumstances. Never could back then.”

Bucky shifts and looks up at him. “Why was it me?”

Steve shrugs again, and presses a kiss to Bucky’s forehead. “You never made me feel weak.”

Bucky blinks up at him. “You’re not weak.”

“Not now. I was.”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, you weren’t. You’ve always been the strongest person I know, Steve. Way stronger than me. I always wondered how you did it, when we were kids.”

“You’re strong,” Steve tells him. “You always were. You survived what they did to you.”

Bucky shakes his head again. “I broke, Steve. I broke every time. I stopped even trying to escape because they always found me and they always broke me again. Every time. Even now, all it takes is a bunch of dumb words, and I just. Crumble.” He tucks his head back under Steve’s chin, and Steve can feel him trembling, and squeezes him tighter.

“But you survived,” he murmurs against Bucky’s hair. “You came back to me. You keep coming back to me, Buck. You’re here. We’re both here.”

“Not sure this is surviving,” Bucky whispers.

“Okay, no,” Steve says. He leans back enough to get his hands on Bucky’s face, tugging at him until he looks up. His eyes are dark and haunted, and Steve leans in and kisses him, soft and slow, trying to be reassuring, trying to give Bucky some measure of comfort. “Things suck right now, for sure. But we’re going to figure this out, Buck. We’ll get that shit out of your head. And then we can do whatever we want. We can go somewhere, just us. We can tell the whole world to fuck off if we need to. Whatever you want, we’ll do it.”

Bucky finds a hint of a smile, but his eyes are still sad. Steve wishes he could wipe that sadness away, but he knows he can’t. Not yet. 

“Where will we go?” Bucky asks. “Antarctica?”

“If you want. If we have to. I mean, at least we’re both used to cold.”

“That’s awful, Steve.”

Steve shrugs and presses a hard, quick kiss to Bucky’s lips. “We could just stay here.” He lets go of Bucky’s face and puts his arms back around him. Bucky settles back into his embrace easily, eagerly; they’re both ready to let this go for now. Neither of them wants to think too hard on the future while they’re together. They have too little time right now.

“Let’s get some shut-eye,” Steve says, after a moment. “You’re morbid when you’re tired.”

He can feel Bucky smiling against his neck. “You’re an asshole.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“A childish asshole.”

“Yep,” Steve agrees.

\----

Steve wakes Bucky up with his hands on his back, gentle against his skin, murmuring soft words in his ear, holding him close without trapping him. Hopefully. Bucky stirs slowly. He was always slow to wake, never a morning person at all. It’s early, too, but Steve hadn’t been able to get back to sleep, awake at dawn and watching Bucky sleep as the light grew.

“Hi,” Bucky murmurs, eventually. He pulls Steve over on top of him, and Steve goes willingly, settling in so his weight is mostly on Bucky. Bucky seems to like it, sighing and shifting in the bed, smiling up at Steve though his eyes are still closed.

“Hi,” Steve replies. He nuzzles into Bucky’s neck, inhaling him, holding him tight, and Bucky puts his arm around Steve’s shoulders and stretches his neck up, giving Steve implicit permission to keep going.

Steve does, turning nuzzling into kissing, into nipping and sucking at the skin of Bucky’s neck, leaving a nice bruise there that probably won’t last too long. Bucky enjoys it, though, if the soft noises of pleasure he keeps making are any indication.

“Can I?” Steve asks, kissing a path down to where Bucky’s t-shirt lays over his skin. He can nudge it aside a little, getting at the juncture of neck and shoulder, at the edges of his collarbone. He does this with great concentration, slow and deliberate, patient with what he wants.

He can feel Bucky’s hesitation, and he stops and looks up. Bucky looks stricken, but he doesn’t let go when Steve starts to pull away.

“Yes,” Bucky says, hurried, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief. 

“Okay,” Steve sighs, relieved.

“But,” Bucky adds. He doesn’t say more though, still looking scared, haunted almost.

Steve leans in and presses soft kisses against Bucky’s jaw, up to his ear, and waits for him to speak again. Bucky turns his head away, silently asking Steve to keep kissing his neck, and Steve obliges. After a few minutes, with Bucky’s hand on the back of his neck holding him close, Bucky finally speaks again.

“I don’t know if this is gonna work. It’s been a long time since--” 

He’s quiet for a long time. Steve waits, keeping his hands on him, breathing soft against his neck. He’s waited this long.

He’ll wait forever. 

“It’s just been a real long time, Steve. With an awful lot of cryo in the middle of that.”

“I know,” Steve agrees softly. “I just wanna make you feel good. Even if--”

Now Buck does twist so he can look at Steve’s eyes. “You do. I just don’t want you to feel like you don’t, if I don’t get off.”

“I won’t,” Steve assures him. “Let me try?”

“Okay,” Bucky agrees. He still seems a little trepidatious, but willing.

Steve grins at him.

If the noises Bucky makes under his lips and tongue and hands are any indication, Steve makes Bucky feel amazing.

\----

Post-orgasm, Bucky is languid, stretched out in the bed with his arm thrown over his head, eyes closed and a blissful smile on his lips. Steve has never seen that exact smile before, but he’s seen something akin to it, only not for eons. Lifetimes. 

“You good?” he murmurs in Bucky’s ear, and Bucky laughs. Actually laughs. It settles over the hollowness in Steve’s chest, settles and spreads, so he starts to feel filled up with it, with something that might be happiness.

“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs back. “‘M good.”

Steve stretches out next to him, shifting until their shoulders are pressed together. He reaches up and massages his jaw, a little sore still. He’s cleaned them both up as much as he can with a discarded shirt, but he’s itchy. He wants a shower.

“You wanna go shower?” 

Bucky stretches and opens his eyes, turning his head to look at Steve, and Steve is struck by how… settled he looks. How at home, here in bed with Steve. He likes it. He loves it. It’s the best thing ever, he’s certain of it. 

“Think I’d rather just stay in bed, honestly.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and Bucky blinks at him for a moment, before a sly smile creeps across his features.

“You want company, Stevie?”

Steve grins. “Maybe.”

“Okay then, let’s go shower.”

The shower is huge, more than big enough for both of them, with multiple jets and a rainfall shower in the ceiling. It’s amazing. The hot water never runs out. Steve’s moans are muffled from echoing off the walls by the water when he comes pressed hard against Bucky’s back, cock sliding between his tightly pressed together thighs. Bucky has his hand clenched around Steve’s neck, murmuring encouragement the whole time.

\----

“So what is the plan?” Bucky asks, later on that morning, after food and a shared nap wrapped up together. They’re still in bed, in fact, and Steve is perfectly content to spend the whole day there. He would spend the whole rest of his life in bed with Bucky, given half a chance.

Steve sighs, not eager to allow reality to intrude on their little bubble of happiness. But he doesn’t hesitate to answer beyond that. “They want to do a new brain scan on you; I made them agree to wait until tomorrow. I think they’re getting close, to figuring it out.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, voice faint.

 

“Yeah, Buck. I think it’s almost over.”

Bucky smiles a little. “Good.”

“And then, if you’re okay with it, we’ll go out to the house for Christmas. Everyone’s going to be there. Everyone wants to see you. I’d far rather keep you to myself, but that’s not really fair.”

Bucky thinks for a moment before he answers. “That sounds nice. I think.”

“Then it’s a plan.”

“What do you want to do today?” Bucky asks.

“This,” Steve replies, and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are my fave. And so are you if you leave me one.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end! Or really, the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like this!

He wakes up. That in itself shouldn’t feel strange, but it kind of does.

He’s in a bright room, lots of light. Cheerful. It doesn’t smell like a hospital, but something about it tells him it is. Possibly the machines he can hear making quiet noises, somewhere out of his sight, but still there.

There’s a huge blonde fella, a literal Adonis, sitting at his side on the edge of the bed. He’s holding his hand. He’s grinning, and crying a little bit.

He blinks up at him. _Steve_ , his brain whispers. It’s the only thing in his brain right now, just _Steve_ , echoing all around, filling the emptiness. It’s a nice feeling, having that filled with _Steve_.

“Hey, Buck,” the blonde fella says. He sounds: relieved, ecstatic, awed, and something else that he can’t put his finger on. “Hey. You’re awake. You’re okay, I’m here.”

“Is Buck… me?” he asks. His brow furrows of its own accord. Buck is a weird name, isn’t it? But it… feels right, coming out of his mouth like that, like it’s something precious, like he is something precious.

The blonde guy-- Steve, he knows this is Steve at least, even if he knows pretty much nothing else-- takes a deep breath and swipes at his eyes with his free hand. He watches Steve put on a brave face and smile again, though it’s tremulous now, a little shaky around the edges.

“Yeah, you’re Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes. You don’t remember anything, huh?”

He shrugs. He knows he knows stuff, it’s just… a little bit far away right now. Behind a closed door. It doesn’t really seem important, right this minute, that he get to it. It’s there. It’ll keep, for a bit. There’s a part of him that knows he isn’t going to like it, when he remembers.

“The doctors said you might have some short-term amnesia when you woke up. They said it probably won’t last too long. I’m sorry, you worked so hard before. You’ll be okay, I’m sure.”

He’s not making a whole lot of sense. He’s definitely rambling. He wants to reach up and smooth the little wrinkle of worry between his brows.

“Steve,” he says.

“You know who I am?” Steve asks. He sounds so hopeful that Bucky’s heart breaks a little bit. He doesn’t know what he ever did to deserve a fella like this one, but he tells himself that he needs to spend the rest of his life thanking his lucky stars.

He nods. “Yeah, you’re Steve.”

“Is that… all?”

Bucky shrugs. “Mostly. There’s one other thing I know.”

“What’s that?”

He lets a smile creep across his features, and loves that Steve smiles back at him easily. “You love me.” He draws the ‘love’ out, sing-song, and grins more when Steve blushes.

Steve replies without hesitation, though, despite the blush creeping down his neck. “Yeah, Buck. I do.”

Bucky smiles at him. Smirks, really. “That’s good.”

Steve laughs. “You’re a jerk.”

He smiles more. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Steve’s expression falls a little, though he tries to salvage it. It’s enough that Bucky notices, but he’s watching Steve closely. Honestly, he doesn’t want to look at anything other than this man. Ever. It should be overwhelming, but it just makes him feel safe. 

He’s safe with Steve. There’s three things he knows.

“What’s wrong?”

Steve shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m sorry. It was--”

“Something I used to do?” Bucky questions.

Steve ducks his head. “Yeah. I’m sorry, I know you don’t remember right now.”

Bucky shrugs. “It’ll probably come back, right?”

“Yeah, Buck. But it’s okay if it doesn’t.”

He shrugs again.

“The doctor will probably be here in a minute. They’ve been monitoring you closely, since the procedure. She’ll be glad to see you’re awake,” Steve goes on, looking back at Bucky. 

“Okay,” Bucky says, with another shrug.

Sure enough, a moment later the doctor comes in. She’s tall, with close-cropped hair and a tattoo that starts just under her ear and winds down her neck and under her shirt. It’s sort of geometric in shape, and it makes Bucky think that this woman is powerful. He thinks that’s a good thing, that his doctor is powerful.

Her manner is straightforward without being brusque. She goes over what they’d done quickly, in just enough detail that he understands it without being overwhelmed. Steve stays at his side the whole time, standing just out of the way at his shoulder, next to the bed. Bucky wants to turn and look at him, but tries to pay attention to the doctor instead.

She explains the amnesia as best she can, assuring him that it should only last a few days at most, and lets him know that they want to monitor him for the rest of the day and do a brain scan before they release him into his own care (though from the way she glances at Steve, he knows that what she really means is that they’ll be releasing him into Steve’s care).

After that, she leaves again, making a comment about getting him some food as she goes.

Steve sits down at his side again when she’s gone. He reaches out and wraps his index finger around Steve’s pinky where his hand is resting on the bed. Steve looks down at their fingers and smiles at him.

“We’ll be okay, Buck, I know it,” Steve says. His smile is a little wobbly. Bucky smiles back at him.

\----

He sleeps for a while, content with knowing that Steve is sitting in the chair next to the bed. He feels unaccountably safe with Steve here. He feels like he shouldn’t, like everything is balanced on the edge of a cliff, but that doesn’t change the way he feels. Like everything is okay, like nothing matters except that Steve is here with him.

He doesn’t remember anymore when he wakes up again, and he shakes his head at the hopeful look Steve gives him.

“It’s okay,” Steve says. He sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself than Bucky.

Bucky doesn’t know how to reassure him, but he wants to. He holds onto that, the knowledge that he wants to make Steve feel better. Even if he never remembers (and he really hopes he does, he wants to), he’ll at least have the knowledge that Steve loves him, and he’s pretty sure he loves Steve back. Even if he doesn’t really know himself or Steve right now.

\----

They come in the next morning and tell him that the brain scan has already been completed. Apparently they’d done it while he was sleeping, without even moving him.

He’s pretty sure that medical technology is far more advanced here than it is elsewhere. Wherever here actually is. When the doctor has left again with assurances that he’ll be released in the afternoon, he turns to Steve.

“Should they have been able to do that? Scan my brain without any machines or anything?”

Steve shrugs a little. “I think Wakanda is more advanced than the rest of the world.”

“I don’t know what Wakanda is.”

“It’s the county we’re in. It’s a small African nation; they’ve been pretty isolationist for most of their history, and their technology is leaps and bounds ahead of most of the rest of the world. I’ve seen stuff since being here that would make Tony--” Steve cuts himself off.

“Who’s Tony?” Bucky reaches out, gesturing at Steve to come closer, and Steve moves from his chair to the side of Bucky’s bed. Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s arm, liking the way it grounds him, feeling Steve solid under his fingers.

“Uh, well.” Steve ducks his head, sort of rubs his neck with his hand. “That’s a really long story.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “I got nothin’ but time here, Stevie.”

Steve looks up at him, sharp. The grin that blooms across his face is liking watching a sunrise, bright and golden and so so warm. “You called me Stevie.”

Bucky feels himself blushing a bit. “Yeah. Is that okay? It just came out.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s blushing too, now, looking at him all soft and still warm, syrupy sweet. It makes Bucky want to look away. It makes him want to latch on and never let go. “It’s fine, Buck. It’s great, really.”

“Okay. So, ya gonna tell me? About this Tony guy?”

“Yeah, sure.” Steve takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes for a moment while he thinks about what to say, and then he starts talking.

Bucky listens, rapt, though he is admittedly more interested in Steve’s voice than in what he’s actually saying.

\----

The nurse brings in a wheelchair when he’s set to be released. Bucky sees the look Steve gives it, gives the nurse, but he doesn’t argue. He just knows he wants to be away from this little hospital room. He’s ready to go. He wants Steve’s scrutiny, and no one else’s, just for a little while.

She gives him a quick rundown, what he should watch out for. They don’t think there will be any complications, but they want him to check in every other day for another brain scan. They’re monitoring his improvement, the changes. The nurse looks frankly more than a bit impressed at the idea that his brain keeps changing, and he knows that there’s something about that, that’s notable, but he can’t really be bothered to figure out what that is. They explain that if he starts getting localized headaches he should come back immediately, but there’s very little risk of that happening.

Steve wheels him down the hallway towards he’s not sure what.

Turns out, Steve is taking him to a swanky apartment within the facility. There are a lot of windows, and everything is comfortable, if a little impersonal. The only thing that looks familiar within it is the painting on one of the walls, all slashes of color and abstraction, sharp lines and hard shapes, but he thinks it feels like Steve, like some strong emotion. Grief, perhaps.

“Did you paint that?” he asks, getting out of the wheelchair to go look at it.

“Yes,” Steve replies, but he doesn’t follow Bucky across the room. He stays planted by the door, standing behind the wheelchair.

Bucky looks at the painting for a few moments, taking it in. It makes him sad, and so does the look on Steve’s face, when he turns to look back at him. So he listens to his instinct to go back across the room and put his arm around Steve. He hugs Steve, puts his chin on his shoulder and holds him gently. 

After a few seconds or a lifetime, Steve slides his arms around Bucky’s waist and holds him back. The hug starts gentle, but Steve’s arms gradually tighten until he’s clinging to Bucky, clinging like he fears what will happen if he lets go.

“Hey,” Bucky murmurs. “It’s okay. I’m here. Mostly, anyway. Sort of. Physically. I am physically here.”

Steve laughs into his shoulder, a little watery. “God, shouldn’t I be the one reassuring you?”

“We can reassure each other, Stevie. It’s okay.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees. “We’ll reassure each other.” He leans back and looks closely at Bucky. Bucky wants to preen under his attention. “We’ll take care of each other, right Buck?”

“Yes,” Bucky agrees immediately, nodding. “We will. Starting with eating. Right now.”

Steve smiles at him, just a quirk of his lips, but it settles something in Bucky, settles within him and spreads. He likes the way that smile makes him feel.

They put together food in the little kitchen, moving easily around each other, like this is something they’ve done a million times before. Bucky thinks perhaps they have. He doesn't know for sure though, and he doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to remind Steve that he doesn’t remember right now, he doesn’t want the air of tentative happiness around Steve to go away.

He doesn’t ever want it to go away. He wants Steve to be happy always. He wants to make Steve happy.

Bucky is pretty sure that’s something he’s always wanted. His whole life. 

After they’ve eaten and dumped their dishes in the sink, agreeing with a glance to leave them for later, Steve putters around the apartment for a while. Bucky sits on the couch and watches.

“Do you want to nap?” Steve asks, eventually. He’s watching Bucky over the back of the couch. Bucky has slumped over, just watching Steve move around, move things around; he’d realized he was watching Steve fidget about fifteen minutes ago, and started waiting for Steve to notice that he was being watched, notice that Bucky knew what he was doing.

Bucky smiles at him. “You gonna join me?”

Steve gapes for a moment. “I--”

Bucky laughs.

“I can if you want me to?”

“Yeah? You gonna come cuddle on me, Stevie?”

Steve blushes. He glances away and then back again. “Yeah, if you want.”

Bucky grins. “Get over here.”

It’s easy, snuggling into the couch with Steve. Bucky shifts and makes himself comfortable, and holds out his arm, beckoning Steve with his hand and his smile, hopefully. Steve is a little hesitant, like he doesn’t quite know where to put himself, but he ends up half on Bucky, half against the back of the couch.

Bucky loves it. He feels safe and grounded with Steve’s weight against him.

Steve rests his head on Bucky’s chest, and Bucky is pretty sure he’s listening to his heartbeat. He runs his hand up and down Steve’s back, slowly, listening to him breathe, counting his breaths unconsciously, matching his own breath to Steve’s, and he drifts off like that.

He hadn’t planned on actually napping at all.

When Bucky wakes up, Steve is still there. It feels amazing, waking up with Steve’s weight still on him. Still safe. Still grounded. Still here.

Still with no real memories to speak of.

That part kinda sucks. But it’s okay. It’ll be okay. Bucky doesn’t know why he thinks that, but it might be Steve. The safety of Steve, the pleasure of him. The love.

Steve makes a snuffling noise into his chest and shifts a little, waking up. Bucky just keeps holding on to him, stroking his hand up and down Steve’s back, and hums a little, just letting him know that Bucky is awake.

“Didju sleep?” Steve asks, muffled against Bucky’s chest.

“Bit,” Bucky replies. “‘M hungry. You hungry?”

“I could eat.” Steve seems reluctant to move though, if the fact that he’s trying to get closer to Bucky instead of moving away is any indication. But Bucky’s stomach starts rumbling after a couple minutes of that, and Steve sighs explosively and pushes himself up onto his knees, looking a little over Bucky.

Bucky looks up at him. His hair is all mussed up, there are creases on his face from Bucky’s shirt. He finds himself smiling at Steve. “This was easier when we were young, wasn’t it?” 

Steve gapes at him for a moment, before sitting back on his haunches with a few blinks of surprise. “You remember that?”

Bucky shrugs. “No. I don’t think so? ‘S just a feeling, I guess.”

“Oh.” Steve can’t quite mask the disappointment, not entirely anyway. “Okay.” He stands up and holds out his hand, pulling Bucky to his feet when he takes it.

They shuffle together into the kitchen and move around gathering food, pretty much whatever they can get their hands on, and stand at the island eating and looking at each other. They’re not really talking, but it’s comfortable.

“Why am I always hungry?” Bucky asks, eventually, after he’s inhaled what must be about the same amount of food as he feels like someone eats in a whole day. “This doesn’t feel normal. It can’t be the ‘just got out of the hospital’ thing. There’s no way.”

He watches as most of the color drains out of Steve’s face, and he chokes a little on his food. Bucky jumps forward to pat his back, though he feels useless even as he’s doing it.

“Sorry, Stevie. I’m sorry, are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine Buck,” Steve replies after a moment more of coughing. “I’m okay.”

Bucky sighs. 

“There’s um,” Steve starts. He furrows his brow before he speaks again. “I don’t suppose telling you it’s a long story would be enough?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No.”

“Okay well. We’re uh. We’re both what they call super-soldiers.”

Bucky’s eyebrows go up. “That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

Steve almost smiles. “Yeah, uh. I volunteered for it, when I was-- there was a war on. I needed to do something, to help.”

Bucky waits for him to go on, but he doesn’t. “I have a feeling that’s something you’ve said a lot.”

Steve smiles a little bit at that. “Yeah, maybe once or twice.”

“I take it I did not volunteer for all of this?”

“No,” Steve replies. “You did not. It was done to you. I’m sorry.”

“Was it your fault?”

“Yes,” Steve says.

“Does anyone besides you think it was your fault? Did _I_ think it was your fault?”

Steve sighs. “No, you didn’t.”

Bucky shrugs. It’s not a sufficient explanation, but he finds that he’s not particularly eager to know the rest of it. “Then it probably wasn’t. Let’s get out of here for a while.”

Steve looks relieved at the change of subject. “What do you want to do?”

He shrugs again. “Let’s go for a walk.”

So they go for a walk.

It’s hot outside in the jungle. Hot and humid, and it warms Bucky from the inside out. It’s nice. Steve is close at his side, and he brings extra warmth; it should feel like he’s too close, but it doesn’t, it just makes him feel warm and safe. Warmer and safer.

It’s quiet out there, for a certain value of quiet. Bucky listens to the bugs and the birds and the various creatures of the wild, and he feels peaceful. At ease. It’s nice.

“You look peaceful,” Steve says, and Bucky feels a moment of deja vu.

“Have you said that to me before?”

Steve chuckles. “Yeah, I have.”

“Was it true, then? Before?”

“Yeah, you were feeling pretty good at the time. You’d made a decision. It was important to you.”

Bucky glances over at him. “You hated it, though.”

Steve’s eyes widen. “How do you know that?”

Bucky shrugs. “Just a hunch. I think I know you pretty well. Or did. Do? I dunno, I’m just going with it right now.”

Steve smiles a little. “You know me better than anyone else.”

“Including you?”

“Probably.”

They’re quiet for a while, just ambling along, enjoying the heat. Bucky bumps his hand into Steve’s a few times, hoping he’ll take the hint, but Steve seems pretty oblivious, so he eventually just grabs his hand. Steve looks over at him, surprised, but he doesn’t let go.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Bucky asks. “If I don’t remember?”

“Are you?” Steve counters.

Bucky thinks about it for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” Steve agrees.

“Okay.” He doesn’t want to worry about it too much right now. It’s gorgeous here, and Steve is with him, and that seems to be all that really matters. Even if he doesn’t ever remember. Maybe he’ll be okay. Maybe they’ll be okay. “I guess we’ll deal with it, either way.”

“We probably shouldn’t worry too much, not yet,” Steve agrees, after a few minutes of walking together in silence.

“Not that that’s going to stop you.”

Steve shrugs, a little sheepish. “Probably not.”

They keep walking along the narrow path through the jungle; it seems to be gradually looping back towards the facility. Bucky doesn’t really want the walk to end. 

“We always take care of each other, don’t we?” he asks, eventually. They’re getting close to the facility, and he’s hungry again, and tired. Apparently whatever brain surgery thing they’d done to him really makes him easily tired.

Or maybe he just wants to snuggle with Steve again.

“Yeah Buck. We do. We always do.” It sounds more like a promise than a reassurance, but he’ll take it.

\----

“This is my room?”

“Yeah,” Steve answers. It comes out sort of like a question, sort of defensive. Like he thinks Bucky doesn’t believe this is where he sleeps.

(Bucky does not believe this is where he sleeps. Especially after the nap on the couch. That had been too easy. He might not remember much of anything, but he knows that he and Steve have shared a bed in the recent past.)

Bucky looks at him. “Okay.”

The bed looks like it’s never been slept in. Everything is neat and tidy and just a little bit dusty. It feels unused, unlived in. 

It doesn’t feel right.

“Okay,” he says again. He steps into the room and turns to look at Steve, half waiting for him to let him know that this is all a joke.

Steve smiles at him a little. “G’night, Buck.”

Bucky hesitates before he replies. “Good night, Stevie.”

He shuts the door and surveys the room. He mentally starts a timer, and goes to shake out the sheets before he climbs into bed. The timer is at about the ten minute mark when there’s a soft knock on the door. Bucky smiles to himself.

“Come in,” he calls.

Steve shuffles into the room and then just stands there, head ducked. He’s practically shuffling in place and wringing his hands. Bucky wants to laugh at him, but he doesn’t.

“C’mere,” he says instead. He twitches the covers aside next to him and makes room for Steve, who crosses the room and slips into bed next to him.

“Do we usually sleep here?” he asks, when Steve is settled on his side next to him. He can feel Steve’s breath on his neck.

“No, we usually slept in the other room. I didn’t--”

“It’s okay, Stevie.”

Steve shakes his head a little. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“So you came crawling into my bed instead?”

“It sounded less embarrassing in my head.”

Bucky chuckles. “Okay.” He turns on his side, getting in Steve’s space. Their foreheads are practically touching. Steve smiles, and Bucky shifts so their foreheads are together. 

“G’night, Buck,” Steve murmurs, his eyes closed.

“G’night.”

\----

He wakes up tangled up in bed with Steve, who is breathing hot and humid against his neck, and he thinks, “ _Oh_.”

It’s all there, in his head. The past couple of days, the past few months, the past seventy years, everything he’d had back before the procedure is back again. 

Bucky remembers.

There are tears in his eyes, and he doesn’t bother to wipe them away, he just lets them go, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Steve stirs a little in his arms, making soothing noises and nuzzling against his neck before he settles down again.

He takes comfort in Steve’s solid weight against his side and he lets his thoughts wander a little, through all the things he remembers from his past, the mostly terrible things, the few good memories he has to hold on to, the past year or so since Steve had found him in Romania, in and out of cryo, and the procedure.

He thinks about the fact that those triggers are gone now, thanks to the doctors and Wanda. He thinks about being free for the first time he can really remember. Childhood is pretty blurry; he mostly remembers Steve, and taking care of Steve, and how huge Steve had always been in his life, how important. So he doesn’t really remember much of the freedom of being a kid.

It’s a weird feeling. It doesn’t feel real, not yet. Even though it’s been a few days, it hasn’t sunk in. Possibly because it’s only now that he knows what really happened and why.

For the first time, he can think about the future, what what happens next, about what he should do. Before, what came next was war. And then what came next was whatever Hydra told him to do. Now, he has no idea what comes next.

It’s both terrifying and exhilarating. 

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Steve mumbles into his neck.

Bucky makes a ‘hmm’ noise in response, and Steve stretches against him, slow to wake up and clearly comfortable where he is. Bucky ruffles his hair and pats his back.

Eventually, Steve lifts his head and looks at Bucky, eyes still a little blurred with sleep, his smile slow and happy.

“Hi, Steve,” Bucky murmurs, just looking at him, waiting for him to figure it out. Steve knows him well, he’ll get there eventually.

“Hi,” Steve mumbles back, smiling at him.

Bucky just keeps looking at him, and watches as it dawns on Steve, that Bucky remembers. The smile on his face changes and grows, bright and warming like nothing Bucky has seen or felt in a really long time. 

“Yeah?” Steve asks.

Bucky smiles at him.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah. Hiya, Stevie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave some love (aka comments)! I need them like air. <3

**Author's Note:**

> I marked it as multi-chapter just so folks know it's not entirely finished. It'll either be more chapters or a series, I haven't figured it out yet.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr but I'm terrible at html so just look for me by the same username.


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